"Well I'll be damned...Check this out.." I raised the lid fully revealing the contents of the chest, which held a strange compass, a dusty old thin book and a long wooden staff perfectly carved. I hand out the staff to Lia to my right which gets Anabel’s full attention and then the strange compass to the captain to my left, the compass was pure basalt except for the pointer which was a green crystal. I then take out the book, it had a brown leather back with strange yellow carvings all over it and a blue crystal stuck in the middle of the front. I sat on the edge of the chest and opened to the first page reading the title “A delver’s introduction…By W.S…No way…”I stare at the initials as if holding the meaning of life itself, why are they there? Why those initials? Why are they the same? A storm of questions rolled through my mind as the ones behind me finally begun to speak. “This compass is broken, its pointer is not aiming at north nor any of the others.” The captain sighed at the useless object “That book give us any information Matt?” he looked down at the book from behind me. “More questions just from the title” I pour mana into my right glove and take out the book I got from the librarian “I got this from the library, it’s a journal of one of the Heroes of DarkGlade. Look at the initials, exactly the same but then look at the date its 2023 which is years after the second wave and years before the third wave while still using our calendar. It’s the same on the journal but a different date which is before even the second wave, just who is this W.S? Is it the human Hero?”

Leya moved in from behind us and joined the conversation “W.S…Your calendar format…It has to be…But how? We saw him…sucked into that portal with the Elder Dragon following soon after…He couldn’t have survived…We even looked for him but nothing…” she took the journal from my hands and started to read it over “This is indeed his journal…But that book there…How did it get here?”. I decide to start turning pages “We won’t know until we read it, it’s only a couple pages and it’s surprisingly in English not any Etryian language like the Elven in the Journal.” I began to read the book out loud for everyone to hear “Greetings adventurers, swords of hire or some strange creature with the brain capacity to open a chest and read English…This is the guide and bio of what you stand within, unless you moved and read this elsewhere…” in short the introduction was written by a rather excited author, full of sly remarks and sentences like “I sometimes wonder if writing has taken the place of socializing for me?”.

Flipping the page I finally started reading the actual book from chapter one of three “I shall start this bluntly, you are currently standing within a being called a Dungeon otherwise known as either a Living Labyrinth, Undead Crypt or Monster Delve depending on the Dungeon’s decisions during its growth. A Dungeon starts out as a simple yet complicated soul crystal, they refer to their crystal as their core. A Dungeon Core, the part of a Dungeon that nobody but its close creations are allowed anywhere close to it. Dungeons are living beings with their spirit connected to their core just like how our body is connected to ours, their core also holds their consciousness which it can also switch to any part of its body being a stone, stair, torch or even the air itself it can see and feel anything that happens within itself. A Dungeon starts out with only its crystal core just how we start out after insemination and grow with the help of our mother’s womb, just like that Dungeons grow with the help of their Dungeon pixie and their own decisions later on. A Dungeon pixie is a rare breed of Fae that has chosen to serve under a Dungeon for its physical body, helping it to grow and defend itself. Dungeons grow by absorbing mana from its surroundings into its core and then using that mana to bend the area within its aura’s range, the more mana it collects the stronger it gets and the larger the range of its aura.”

The rest continues with mathematical equations to a dungeon’s mana collection rate, aura ratio to mana increase and rather well made images of a Dungeon core and Dungeon Pixie. Flipping to the next page I find the second chapter “When a Dungeon gains enough mana and have made a suitable body, with the help and guidance of their pixie they unlock the ability to summon non-sentient creatures under their command. These monsters will roam the Dungeon’s body, set up groups as per the Dungeon’s demands or even ambushes and traps depending on the Monster’s intelligence and capabilities. These monsters though are not actually alive per say, they are part of the Dungeon and can inhibit its consciousness while returning to its core as mana when destroyed.” It trails off to the known species a Dungeon can summon which ranges to most known and extinct monsters except for Dragonkin which stops at Kobolds and Orckin which stops at Hobgoblins. Turning the next five pages which held the list of monsters along with images of what they may look like, wear and variations.

The last two pages held the third and final chapter “The birth of a Dungeon is quite an interesting topic, their crystal core is a natural creation that compresses and builds over months through the start of a single speck of the crystallization type it is made of. When the core is large enough it starts to attract lost souls from the spirit realm to inhibit it with the seductive promise of a new life, when such a soul is attracted the core absorbs it and they merge. The crystal that starts it all also has a name, they are called God gems and like their name suggests they have an insane amount of uses. A god gem is created with the compressing of four dense mana types or more, which is almost impossible to do without the perfect conditions and terrain. Which takes me to how this Dungeon you stand in has arrived where it has and contains my book, when I arrived at their realm it was in utter chaos and disfiguration. The dungeons had been warring with each other over land for all of their existence as land was the only way they could get stronger and grow since otherwise sentient beings from which they could gain mana from didn’t exist in this realm. It took me weeks but I was able to communicate with one of the Dungeons that owned a major amount of the planet I arrived on, from it I got my information and taught it about the other realms. With it I was able to bring worlds of dungeons together to aid in opening portals to other worlds where they could shatter their core and send it through to start anew, with the promise of sentient beings to explore their creations and feed them mana with the lure of great rewards. I also spread this book with each one for them to recreate and set as the first reward one would come across along with a compass made to follow certain paths within a dungeon depending on the group size and never taking to the core room, that is a room you do not want to enter as the dungeon will go full hostile with the sole intent of killing you.”

I stand up whilst closing the book, turning to look at the other’s expressions. Everyone looked baffled and at a loss for words and I did not blame them as even I was so. “He’s…Alive?...William is alive?” Leya looked confused and baffled “It’s been so long and he may still be alive?...I need to tell them…”. The captain sighed and set his hand on her shoulder “I know how you must feel but telling his family comes after the contract, we don’t know if this book is even saying the truth so we need to confirm as much of it as possible.” He looked down at the compass one more time “If what the book says is true then following this compass was meant for treasure hunters, that staff is probably one of such treasures.” He looks at the staff and then back to me “Our goal remains unchanged, we investigate the middle room where said “Core” should be.” With everyone’s nodding and Leya’s torn agreement we move on. I take back the journal from Leya and store both books with my gloves, Anabel takes the staff to test its properties while the captain just dumps the compass in his pocket ignoring its existence.

We head down the next corridor and walk through for a couple minutes, as far as we could see we had only walked through half of it as we skipped two turns to continue taking the path towards the middle room. The torches got weaker and weaker the deeper we went, until we could barely see each other. *Drip*…*Drop*…*Plop*…Strange sounds came from different directions as Anabel flared up a fire to make more light, something was dripping down from the roof on top of us and when we looked up we were horrified at what it was. Slimes…Hundreds of litres of blue slimy goo rested on the roof that we hadn’t noticed until it got thick enough to leak down, when the fire was lit atop Anabel’s new staff the slime started to congregate into a single mass right on top of us. “Make cover!” Leya screamed at the top of her lungs from what sounded like fear, Jerrald followed with creating a barrier to cover us all as the mass fell on top of it and splattered slime on the walls and floor around us. The large mass of slime moved and fell off the barrier behind us, within the slime one could see hundreds of small crystal like spheres which we knew as their cores. The mass started to separate as the slimes began sliding towards us at speed greater than they should have been able to generate “Run!” The captain ordered as he punched the ground shattering the floor and raising some of it as a pseudo barricade.

We turned to run but after a couple meters Anabel noticed something off “Ell? What are you doing! Run!” we stopped and turned to see Ell still standing behind the barricade which was currently being overrun by slimes trying to climb over, she was holding a strand of her hair in her raised palm and stared at it. Her hair had been touched by some slime, with their acidic nature some of it had been burned off. “ELL!” Anabel shouted again to get her attention and Ell turned to glance behind her which is when we saw her current expression, her usual smile had disappeared. Anabel took a step back when she saw Ell’s expression, wide grin from ear to ear with eyes pure of insanity. Ell grew her vines which covered most of her from behind, I counted more than three times the amount of vines she usually used. Without order or mercy the vines began to move and in a frenzy of madness stabbed away at the slime cores, destroying the stone barricade completely while splattering slime all over the corridor. “Shit!” Jerrald rushed forward and as fast as he could erected a barrier in front of her, the vines stabbed and bashed into the barrier a couple of times but most moved around it and attacked the slimes relentlessly. We didn’t know what to do to calm her down although the dungeon didn’t give us time to think this over for too long, from the other side of the corridor more sounds could be heard moving towards us *Slop*..*Drip*.. “More slime!” Lia pointed out the mass of blue slime cutting off our only escape from this corridor, it was a well-planned trap and we fell for it.

“Jerrald keep defending Ell! Anabel, Lia help me erect a barrier here as well!” The captain turned and raised both arms with palms open aimed at the second blob of slime, concentrating hard he started to create the barrier although small at first. When Anabel and Lia joined him the barrier got larger and thicker with multiple coloured patches due to the different mana signatures making it up, the barrier covered most of the corridor but a couple meters from the roof down was still wide open. I took this chance and made use of one of Wayne’s abilities, using the wall as a platform I leaped up to the roof as dark and chaos mana encircled my left arm and leg forming claws. I dug my hand into the roof grasping tightly with the claw and then my leg into the wall giving me a good grip, my right leg and arm were left dangling. I was about to summon Ember to start shooting down cores but Leya suddenly leaped to my arm and grabbed onto it “Wha…What are you?!” I started to struggle. “Just shut it and hold me up!” She then raised both her legs onto my right and held my arm with her left hand, with her right hand she started grabbing some of her throwing knives and imbued them with mana making them glow red “On my mark let go of the roof!” she gave me a look only one about to do something insane would. The mass of slime was only meters away from crashing into the barrier like a wave of blue, Leya threw all five knives in a fan attack. “Now!” on her words I released the claw magic and we fell, I pulled her legs up and held her princess style until we hit the ground as I imbued mana into my whole lower body to reduce the impact. An explosion of fire followed as the knives hit the blob of slime and ignited the substance into a hellfire.

I set her down as I stared into the barrier waiting for the fire and smoke to cease, I glanced at Leya who simply gave me an innocent grin “Blue slimes are highly flammable and love fire, since it lets their cores evolve to red slimes once they absorbed enough heat from their blue slime igniting.” She stood up as I lay there kneeling “We need to make sure to destroy all the cores as soon as possible, red slimes are one of the worst types to fight in close quarters”. I sighed and summoned Ember and Wayne “Leave that to me”. I stepped forward and closer to the barrier, it was full of cracks and dents as the captain, Anabel and Lia tried their best to keep it whole “Drop the barrier” they fell to the ground relieved to stop, the barrier quickly dissipated as its supply of mana stopped and when it did a wave of smoke fell upon us covering out vision. I raised Ember and shot an explosive round to dissipate the smoke, in doing so most of the cores came into my vision and I began my role. One by one with rapid succession I fired both my aethers putting holes in each and every core ruining them before the blue crystals turned red. About seventy rounds later and a couple minutes all cores had been destroyed and the smoke had mostly cleared out, I turned to assess the group’s current situation. Leya looked fine but the Captain, Lia and even Anabel looked exhausted. Looking down the corridor I saw Jerrald on his knees while holding Ell in his arms, behind them was complete mayhem as shattered cores, blue slime and blade like thorns filled the corridor completely.

Jerrald stood up and began walking towards us, he almost stumbled a couple times but made it “That was insane, for so much slime to build up…insanity…” he was breathing heavily while Ell lay unconscious in his arms. “How is she?” I asked with some concern at her pale expression, trembling hands and pain filled expression. “Mana exhaustion, she’ll be fine in a couple days..” he said as he sat her down on the floor next to us “What now Carl?”. The captain glanced at all of us before speaking out his decision, “We head back to the caravan and rest…We simply cannot go further than this today…” everyone except me and Leya was either exhausted or unconscious. We walked back to the first room with Jerrald holding onto me for support while Lia carried Ell, thankfully meeting no monsters or traps on the way back we did however find something much stranger. The door to the exit was closed for some reason, not many noticed this oddity and Leya who did rushed over to it and pulled from its wooden knob. When the door didn’t budge she pulled out a knife and started working on the edge trying to pry it open, she turned with a horrified expression “It’s locked shut…”. A dreadfully known feeling started working its way up my spine “No way…Move…” I stepped to the side and line myself to the door as everyone moved out of the way, summoning forth Wayne I took aim and poured my mana into the gun. As the mass of purple and black formed it shot forth and grew until it hit the door head on, the mass of chaos lurked in front of the door for a couple seconds as sparks of mana flew all around it until it dissipated.

When I saw the door unscratched my fear had been proven true and only made worse with Anabel’s reaction “We’re stuck in here…Wha...Why…Who would…” she looked like she was about to start freaking out. “Everyone calm down” The captain who had taken over helping Jerrald and set him down to sit “We need to calm down and think this over, agitation never helped anyone. Let’s just recall everything we know and come up with a…” I couldn’t hold it in any longer “No…We already know why…and who…It’s the Dungeon…It wants us to stay in here as long as possible…Do you feel it? The continuous decrease of our mana regeneration? Why do you think the Dungeon is so large with so many routes? It’s to keep us here as long as possible but it miscalculated…We got exhausted too early and began heading back…It doesn’t want to kill us but it wants to keep us as batteries for as long as possible. Think about it…It never had any mana from beings like us before…It’s hooked now…It wants more and cannot help itself…I should know…” The last words I whispered to where nobody heard them. “Well if that’s true then it will have to let us leave at some point, we will end up dieing of mana exhaustion if we run out completely!” Anabel exclaimed as she tried to calm herself to think “But…” but she also noticed. “But our mana is regenerating faster than it can drain it, it won’t kill us but keep us alive and continue to drain us.” Jerrald was the one to speak now.

“No…No…I…I can’t…” The feeling was suffocating, to the point I felt like going insane “I can’t…stuck…” I took a couple steps back revealing my expression to everyone, eyes wide open with fear as I trembled and stumbled backwards “No…I will not…” now turning to anger and frustration “I will not be held down…No…Not again…” the images floating through my mind and the ever increasing feeling of suffocation stopped me from thinking clearly. Images of chains, locked doors, rooms full of strange tools I knew too well and corpses filled my mind. “Matt...Matthew! Snap out of it!” Leya walked over and held my shoulders trying to shake me out of my stupor, finally slapping me across the face “Snap the hell out of it boy!” but it didn’t help, I was already out of it. Wayne and Ember appeared in my hands and Leya took a couple steps back, purple mist started to leak out of myself as my very body shifted into mist and moved at break-neck speed into the passage we came from. “MATTHEW!!” someone screamed my name but I couldn’t tell If it was real or another memory, I sped down multiple corridors in mist form and met with many dead ends while completely skipping traps and monsters alike. In my madness I wandered the Dungeon’s corridors and rooms for what felt like an eternity as misty bat like figures returned to my main body, stopping suddenly Wayne forced the path into my mind and I shot forth once again but this time with an actual aim. The moment I reached the door the mist surrounding my body stopped building up and began to disappear, Wayne and Ember forced their aethers to return into storage in fear of me running out of mana but it was too late.

The door wasn’t a door at all, a large medieval castle gate stood in front of me with two wooden double doors just as large behind it. I took steps closer and the gate began to rise while the doors behind it creaked open, all alone they opened as I stepped into the room. We were wrong, the room was indeed key to many things but not the Dungeon’s core. As I entered the well-lit hall hundreds of figures turned to face my direction, primal goblins littered the whole room wielding spears, shields and swords while wearing nothing more than a loin cloth and some torn cloth pants. In the middle of the room a single large figure rose from the swarm, red skinned, taller and more muscular than the green midgets it stood tall and glared condescendingly at me. The hobgoblin had a commanding air to it, goblins moved out of its way as it turned giving me its back and walked away as if I wasn’t worth its time. With this sight in front of me my mind was filled with a different kind of fear, I began to think of what to do next but then heard the roars and screams of pure hatred coming from behind me. The monsters I skipped hadn’t given up on chasing me and were creating a stampede, in my mindless rush to get out I had fucked up incredibly. I was stuck between a swarm of armed Goblins and a stampede of pissed off Minotaurs, my mana was too low for me to use any kind of magic without entering a state of mana exhaustion and I couldn’t use my weapons without mana.

The stampede behind me was getting closer and closer as the goblins began to slowly move in on my position trying to surround me, I began thinking hard of any possible way to get out of this situation alive. It clicked in my mind then, I wasn’t fighting an army, I wasn’t fighting hundreds of monsters. No I was fighting a single entity, a single consciousness that could switch bodies and give orders to the rest. The first Minotaur we fought, the way the slimes moved to trap us, The Dungeon’s consciousness was behind it all and now it was in this very room watching over this whole thing. It had hundreds of usable bodies but why use any of them if it could use the strongest of them all? Why be inside a weak goblin or a magic-less Minotaur when it could use a Hobgoblin? I glared down the swarm of green until my eyes fixed on a single spot, the red monster had climbed up the couple steps at the other side of the room and was sitting on a large throne like seat with an amused grin. My mind had cooled off, my whole body had frozen in place as seconds ticked away in my mind while I fully concentrated on my ears. The monsters got closer and closer until I finally began taking steps forward and towards the goblins, staring intently at a shield wielding goblin I rushed forward while forming a fist and before even reaching it I poured forward whatever aura I had remaining to induce fear onto the short green monster. As I had anticipated it raised its shield to defend itself, using that as a platform I leaped into the air and over an army of green. Landing behind the goblins I quickly spun around and disarmed a goblin, using its own sword I cut its gut open and turned again sprinting towards the throne.

All I heard behind me was the crashing of bodies and screams of anguish as I imagined the Minotaurs crashing into the stupefied goblins, in front of me the Hobgoblin stood up with an expression made of deep pure rage. Jumping over the steps I rushed towards the monster and lunged forward at its chest, it dodged to the left as my blade penetrated the wooden throne but I wasn’t done there and kicked the Hobgoblin off the side of the throne with my left leg. I quickly pulled out the sword from the throne and continued my attack, it unsheathed its own weapons as two one handed axes sliced towards my chest. I took a step back as the axes cut the air where I once stood, using this opportunity and my superior agility I side stepped to the left and lunged at its neck but I wasn’t fast enough and it used teleportation magic to shadow step a meter or two away from me. It was faster and stronger than any goblin but I wasn’t going to be outdone by an inexperienced monster just because I was low on mana, I continued my attack with a flurry of lunges to force it backwards while every wrong step it made left an opening which I abused by aiming at its vitals. When I did aim at its vitals it shadow stepped out of the way, this went on for a couple seconds as it had to shadow step up to five times. It stopped my attack and took a defensive, it saw its opportunity and began its own assault with a frenzy of hacking and slashing while I dodged and parried what I could although taking multiple cuts to my shoulders, legs and chest. After a slash directed at my neck I took yet another step backwards and tripped, while I fell backwards it rushed forward to finish me off but I had lured it into doing so. The second it began its charge I used what little mana I had remaining and forced a flashbang to blind it, confused it used shadow step to back away from me only to end up closer. With the use of mist form I got behind it to where I calculated its shadow step would take it and with a clean lunge stabbed my sword directly into its heart.

As quickly as I could and without even pulling out the sword I grabbed its arms and spun the dieing Hobgoblin until I stopped and threw it over the crowd of monsters. It fell into the middle of them all and landed on top of a confused Minotaur and into its arms, I began to fall to the ground to take cover behind the throne as the Hobgoblin’s whole body lit up with fire and exploded. The blazing hell storm that followed charred anything in its blast radius which included every corner of the hall, using what little strength I had within me I forced myself from falling unconscious due to mana exhaustion and pushed the throne as hard as I could so it wouldn’t squash me between it and the wall. When the explosion finished I was holding a large wooden chair from sandwiching me into a brick wall, tired and suffering the effects of mana exhaustion I fell down with my back to the wall as I plunged into unconsciousness.

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Edited by; Birse, Explosive Hobs yay

Author; What have we learned today?; Shoot Hobgoblins dead from far far away… :D Remember to rate xD