Seeing one of his most powerful monsters under siege, Myles didn’t hesitate and leaped into action.

Without a second thought, he shoved a hand past Paragon’s membrane, into its oozy interior, and grabbed onto Squishy’s arm. With his monster’s arm in hand, Myles pulled. The slime was thick as honey, but it didn’t stop him. This monster was his, not some wild creature he had to fear.

Using all his strength to pull her free, he scolded the violet slime audibly and through their connection. His word was law, and the power behind his words was steel.

“Stop! Let Squishy go!”

Let her go!

All action stopped as the slimes turned to look at him. That was about the time his team realized something was wrong. The table he’d left behind boomed and dishes broke as his team rushed to react to his call and lend their aid to whatever problem had arisen in his bathroom.

Then, things got complicated.

Voices, emotions, and intentions warred in his mind for dominance as everything seemed to hit him at once. Fear, disappointment, confusion, embarrassment, worry, and more came at him from all sides as the different views and opinions fought to be seen first.

Myles wasn’t sure what was going on as his connection to his monsters resonated with the same emotion as the four slimes seemed confused and hurt.

Doughnut, Medic, and Topoff didn’t question him and obeyed the unspoken command to stop. Paragon froze its wiggling and practically melted off Squishy’s glimmering metallic form, no worse for wear as Squishy simply looked out at him. She tilted her head as the shadow of tears made themselves known at the edges of her eyes.

“What’s going on?” Will asked.

Myles wanted to know that himself and explained what he’d come to find. All the slimes looked at him as if he’d kicked each and every one of them before taking their dessert.

“Huh,” he said simply. “Why not just ask her?”

Because that would have made sense.

“Squishy,” Myles asked, “What happened?”

Squishy was still getting a hang of the common language, and in her dejected state, her early attempts were more emotions, chimes, and warbles rather than words. Sensing her distress, Myles took a breath and did the one thing most children responded to.

He pulled her into a hug.

“You’re not in trouble,” he told her. “But I need to know what happened.”

Slowly but surely as Myles calmed down, so did her. Then, the words came easier as she focused and slowly explained the situation.

She had been training.

As he and the others listened, the information came together as an update to his Monster Lore:

Information on a Unique Monster Trait has been defined!

Mistress of Slime

Skill Type - Trait: Passive

Cost: None

Cast Time: None

Cool Down: None

Distance: Varies

Success Determination: Willpower vs. Willpower

Passive Effect: Allied slimes will obey your commands without question.

Secondary Effect: With a successful Will check, enemy slimes will fall under your control for a duration equal to your Will times ten in seconds. This effect is doubled for every combined ten willpower and intelligence you have compared to your target. This is not a taming effect and control cannot be transferred from you to a monster tamer without a proper Soul Link.

“I’m sorry,” Myles sighed as the explanation filled in the gaps.

Squishy smiled again and chimed her answer as her arms wrapped around him. “Okay.”

He was not doing well with this father figure thing. Was he taking on too much?

A hand on his shoulder squeezed gently as Squishy kept him trapped in her literal iron grip.

“You are doing well,” Ashra sent to him. “Just keep in mind she is young. She is growing based on your teachings. Teach her well.”

Myles sighed again. He knew she meant well, but it wasn’t that easy.

“Silpha needs you in the barn still,” she added before turning to return from the window she had apparently gone through to arrive. “I will inform her it may be a bit longer.”

When had she arrived in the first place? Myles wondered to himself but didn’t question it as he stirred. Squishy continued to hold on, giggling softly as her arms stretched to let her stay on the ground.

“Keep practicing,” Myles said putting on his best smile. “Just don’t hurt anyone, okay?”

“Okay!” she replied, much happier for the encouragement as the other smiles purred proudly.

The action still gave him pause, but he sighed. It could have been worse.

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Tail offered when Myles didn’t immediately start moving. Myles was a little surprised by that, but they nodded and gently waved him off. “I will keep her out of trouble. I knew many kits before everything happened. They are mostly the same. She probably bites less.”

He could certainly hope so.

***

After making sure everyone was okay, Myles made his way to the barn. It still amazed him how the small, simple structure had become something so much more under Silpha’s influence. If it wasn’t the grand dungeon, he doubted he’d be able to keep her hidden for so long. Then again, Myles didn’t doubt for a moment that Sindra knew about her.

No one responded to his thoughts, so he continued further, figuring the two monsters were caught up in conversation again. Sure enough, Silpha had taken her monster form to speak with Ashra again and Myles understood a bit more about why Kendra was impressed with his ‘self-control.’

Silpha chose that moment to look over at him as if sensing the thought.

“You should be proud,” Silpha said almost teasingly. “Many men die serving sirens of all kinds.”

“I don’t think keeping my libido in check is something that I should be proud of.”

“You’d be surprised,” she said openly before her tone went from that of a friend to that of a seasoned adventurer. “You have your token still?”

There was only one she could mean and Myles nodded, searching his inventory for the item and producing it.

As it appeared the first time, the coin looked just like any coin made of the night sky. There were no other markings and as he focused this time, there was no trigger for his lore skill. It was a coin-shaped, solid void in the world itself.

He held the token up to examine and focused again, and again, his Skill failed to trigger and identify it. He kept his focus centered on it to the point his skull felt like it was going to split before he relaxed.

Stupid token.

Unlike Myles, Silpha grinned wildly and slid her eyes toward where the coin was held.

“I can see it!”

“That’s good, right?” Myles asked. “You couldn’t before…”

Deftly, she interrupted him as she poked it, nearly knocking it from his hand.”

“Hey. Be careful.”

She poked it again, and the coin fell back into his palm. Myles stumbled slightly, but he almost over-corrected and dropped the token entirely. The coin fell backward easily and sat like a warm ember on a cold winter’s night in his hand as he wrapped his fingers around it protectively.

“Hey!”

She practically squealed with excitement.

“I can touch it!”

Myles looked affronted.

“It is progress,” Ashra confirmed.

His affronted expression improved to look slightly perturbed. “It is, but what’s it mean?”

Her grin made him feel like a fish before a bear. “This.”

Before he could ask what, new information flooded his mind as it had before when he received information about Morpheus. The information, however, was slightly less useful.

This isn’t for her to spoil. That would be telling.

Myles considered asking her directly what she wanted to tell him. Then, the ethereal sentence warped as two different fonts tried to mingle, warring for his attention. Eventually, they stabilized and explained themselves.

I wouldn’t recommend that.

Just remind her of the rules. Will you, Myles?

Myles looked it over curiously. It wasn’t the first time his Skills had teased at something more, but it was always a bit more disturbing when it did it in real-time. “I don’t think you’re supposed to even try to tell me.”

“Why?” Silpha asked. Once Myles explained, Silpha looked puzzled for only a moment, then cursed. “I didn’t think that would trigger it.”

“Trigger what?”

“A failsafe,” Silpha begrudged. “A protective spell trigger built into the item. I can’t tell you, just like Ashra can’t, or something bad will happen.”

“Can’t tell me what?”

“What it is,” Silpha elaborated as if it were obvious.

“What the coin is?”

Silpha nodded. “You know that isn’t what it really is, right?”

“It’s a drink token,” Myles answered plainly.

Silpha snorted. “If that’s a drink token, I’m a pretty rock.”

Myles thought about pointing out the fact she was, in fact, a pretty rock, but Ashra beat him to it.

“Your stone is beautiful,” Ashra said to break the following silence.

“Thank you,” Silpha said, smiling at the rabbitkin. “But the point is, there is more to it than meets the eye, Myles.”

“I figured,” he said, remembering what felt like years ago rather than a handful of days. “I’ve got a lot to learn, I guess.”

Silpha’s smile suddenly went manic as it grew, crossed her predatory lips, and reached for the heavens in excitement. “There’s so much left to learn, Myles. So. Much.”

“That’s… good,” Myles said, considering taking a step back.

As quickly as her face returned to a more sane state, she must have realized how manic she looked. “Sorry. I get excited about learning.”

“I know,” Myles said, feeling a bit more accepting of her excitement. “Is there anything else?”

“I do, actually,” she said, vanishing from her avatar back into her core. Before Myles could question it, she returned, wearing something much less distracting. The nondescript blue scale shirt and seaweed dress did an amazing job of keeping his attention right where it was needed, nestled in her arms.

She carried a book bound in silver that was all too familiar to him by this point, The Founding of the Kessivan Grand Dungeon by Amber R. Soulborn.

As she handed the book over, Silpha continued speaking. “I’ve finished translating it. This is a copy. The original is still in your home.”

It dawned on Myles too slowly to have him argue, and she didn’t stop to let him.

“Elder Kessivan is a tricky core to crack, even if it's the root of the continent’s common tongue. If it wasn’t for the reference of the title repeated on the first page, it would have taken so much longer. Still, what it doesn’t say in a work is as important as what it does. The scratches are interesting enough that each stroke changes the meaning of an entire symbol or hides secondary meanings! The language is so complex and fascinating. Dead, but fascinating. I can see why it wasn’t part of my codex.”

Myles had already tuned her out in favor of the tome of a book before him. For once, he was as excited about learning as Silpha as he cracked the book open. With a motion, her hand placed itself on the cover, closing it again.

She stopped him.

He looked up at her, something he could feel took willpower beyond her normal means.

“Read the forward,” she said firmly. “The pages before the index.”

“I know what a forward is.”

Still, Myles nodded, sat down with his back against the wall of the barn, and read.

***

This collection is the personal notes of Amber Remus Soulborn, First [Arcane Mechanist] of Project Guardian, taken per the Grand Dungeon Initiative.

As such, I am tasked with taking notes and organizing them in such a way my work will outlast me and serve as a basis to protect the nation I love so deeply. Kess is my home, my family, my love…

My everything.

I will protect it with everything I have.

Within this tome will be the notes of my thoughts and my designs while working with my team and the Others, as I’ve taken to calling them. Though, I still find it odd to be working with them so closely when it could so clearly be done by their hand easier.

The gods, Outsiders, Starfallen, Luxborn, Mana-hearted… whatever they are calling themselves now, have so much more power than we could have ever imagined. It’s like we’re just kids to them playing with a beehive to them. There’s only one outcome no matter how hard we try, but they’re willing to see the experiment though for the good of other worlds who stray as we have.

Together, we’ve designed quite a few unique parameters for our efforts. As long as all sides keep their word, we will heal our doomed world.

We will fix the World Core.

We will not go quietly into Oblivia’s embrace.

***

Myles promptly shut the book and looked at Silpha.

She nodded, giving him a knowing look.

Myles took a deep breath and went back to the page.

***

The contents within will begin with the template floor created by their design mingled with our own fail safes and move forward on a multi-point permutation based on the most common decisions made and the populations within the dungeon’s Run, up to and including how a floor guardian is defeated. [Overseer] will keep things running, as is his task in all this. When we started this, none of us could have imagined it would come to this.

We lacked imagination, so here we are.

The World Core is dying, and time is about the only thing we have as long as the Ascended Dungeons, our Grand Dungeons, survive.

Hopefully, this will all be worth it. It’s the least I can do to help [Overseer].

I owe him my life, after all.

All of us do.

Amber R. Soulborn

1/1/1

***

Myles read the entry over a second time.

Then a third.

Then a fourth.

Then, he shut the cover and looked at the expectant, barely containing herself dungeon avatar.

“Is this…”

“Yes!” Silpha nearly squealed, cutting him off. “It’s the guide to how they built the Grand Dungeon with the Overseer and the gods themselves!”

Myles looked dumbstruck as he looked from her to the book. The guide on how the dungeon was built… the templates… the recipes to the world’s largest power were in his hands and the mind of his dungeon core.

By the Pantheon above and the Mists below…

“How much trouble are we in?” Myles asked, in awe of the item in his hands.

“More than either of us could imagine,” Silpha grinned. “You have no idea.”

Ashra cracked her knuckles, and Myles considered those words.

The dungeon wouldn’t be angry with him, as it had given it to him, but Amber R. Soulborn mentions more than just the dungeon. He or she mentions every greater being he’d ever heard of, and some he hadn’t. Seeing as he’d never heard of her or the founding of the dungeon outside of what they taught in school, there’d be threats from above, below, and in the highest reaches of power if the information was being repressed rather than forgotten or lost.

Of course, that wasn’t enough for Myles’s bad luck.

There was another concern that the author mentioned, the world core. What was a world core, how did it break, and what did the Grand Dungeons have to do with it?

He wasn’t a religious man, but he really, really didn’t want to be smitten.

Then again, it wasn’t just him now. Was it?

He had a team, and among them was god-touched. How would their god react to him having this?

“I’m starting to,” Myles said warily. His mind lingered on his team. Would he be protecting them or would he be their [Executioner] if he got them involved, too? “Ashra?”

“They need to be told,” she said without hesitation. “They would not want you to bear the burden alone.”

He had hoped for that answer. “Go get them. We have a lot to talk about.”

She was gone before the last word left his lips, and it made Myles smile.

If he was going to become a lightning rod of hate, having a few extra grounding points could be the difference between life and death.

***

If this is found and read on any other website other than Amazon by R.J. Triveri or on Royal Road by Author_RJ, it has been stolen. Please go read it and support my work!

Trosana Leea considered herself a sensible, hard-working, driven woman.

With her looks, her charm, and her drive, she could have given herself an easy, profitable life. With her purple hair, scale pattern, and voluptuous frame, she was an exotic beauty, and she had even been called captivating by some. Becoming a woman that was desired would have been easy. The right dress, parting her hair in just the right way, and telling others just what they wanted to hear would have been child’s play.

That would have been easy, but that wasn’t her path.

She wasn’t an actress.

She wasn’t a dancer.

She wasn’t some fire-and-forget magical girl standing in for someone’s fantasy.

She was Trosana Leea, the daughter of Sarah and Val Leea. She had sacrificed the easy life, burned the bridge behind her, and never looked back. From a young age, she was driven to be more than a pretty face. She was going to do her parents proud and change the world!

Today though…

Today, she almost wished she wasn’t.

With the shock of what Myles held, the caffeine coursing through her veins nearly ended her right there and then. Over the last few days, Trosana had exhausted every source, burned every favor, and done everything she could to discover who had written that book and come up with nothing.

Now, in front of the world, Myles had shown off the single most crucial, world-shattering piece of information ever received by a Runner that she knew about. How could she even do anything with it without getting arrested or tried for treason?

That kind of information would probably get him killed, or at least get his stream censored for the time to leave the audience on edge until the Kingdom of Kess could figure out what to do about the fact some random Runner, albeit a popular one, had national if not global secrets that would upend the power structure as they knew it.

It would explain why her small office had not one but five agents of the crown only moments after the revelation on her private line.

Her room was in one of the most protected wings of the Grand Dungeon of Kess’s dungeon town. She had privacy wards and anti-scrying on par with the royal palace, as all reporters did. Well, all reporters on her level, anyway. Even with the best defenses money could buy, Trosana hadn’t felt any breach in her security, hadn’t heard a single alarm sound, or even known something so simple as how or when the group arrived while she was awake and alert.

One moment, she was alone, fretting over the stream’s contents.

The next moment, they simply were just there.

No windows had broken, no doors opened, and there wasn’t even the electric smell of a gate opening. It was like they’d always been there and simply showed themselves.

The five wore matching, matte black armor with polished, black-visored helmets. They bore no weapons and wore matching raiment of white and purple, marking them as the highest law in the kingdom below the king himself, the Knights of Kess.

Yep.

It was going to be one of THOSE days.

“Can I drink?” Trosana asked as she slumped slightly.

The knight at the door cocked his head as if amused.

“We’d rather you wouldn’t,” came his amused response. “Lucidity will be important for your questions to come, and throwing up on the floor when the Royal Librarian arrives would be in poor form.”

Yep.

One of those days.

Trosana sighed, sipping at her water rather than the coffee so her heart didn’t explode.

“Well, fuck.”