Aurora

When we finished off the boss, I was tempted to warn them about the second phase. However, saying anything might have caused some suspicion as to why I knew about it. Thus, I decided to keep my mouth shut. As long as my body survived the encounter, I would be fine. Count Drac was already waiting outside with a considerable force for me to take the core once we finished here.

The pool to the side of the room exploded as the wife shown on the banners jumped out and landed with a wet thud. She wore a torn and dirtied wedding gown with old blood patches from wounds. The heads of her children hung from her waist, tied with rusted chains. It was quite a gruesome sight.

“Shit! A second phase!” Maxwell shouted as the rest of the party took up positions.

Our tanks had already suffered from the first phase. It would be rough on them to hold out for another fight. The female boss screamed sounding much like she was at the bottom of the lake as the battle started. She began to chant causing the water around the room to come to life. Much like tentacles, the streams of water whipped at the party members. I faded to the shadows to wait for a good time to strike.

Along the walls, the banners that we destroyed before had returned with evil looking portraits of the wife. It was clear that whatever had brought the estate to its current state of ruin had been caused by the wife. Whether that was voluntary or not, well that was probably lost to history.

“Magic Defense!” Razz shouted. The healers began to cast simple protection spells that reduced the amount of damage received from the magically controlled water. That wasn’t the boss’s only trick. Even as she chanted to control the water, the two heads on her waist began to chant as well. One of the physical damage dealers wasn’t covered completely by the tanks and took a spear sized icicle to his head.

The other head created a wave of heated steam that burned to the touch. My arm got caught in the spell as I tried to move out of the way. All this only took a few seconds to transpire, but the party was dealt a heavy blow to their health. Our two healers were already overwhelmed trying to shield from the magic damage and weren’t able to concentrate on healing the damage.

“Don’t hold back on the potions!” Maxwell yelled over the shouting and screams of confusion.

Thankfully, the boss’s attacks stilled allowing us to fight back. The tanks charged the boss using their taunts on her. While she certainly focused on them, defending against magic with a physical shield was hard for them to do. The water was acting like a living creature after all. It was able to bend and twist to avoid the shield and attack the holder.

The few archers began pelting the boss with their arrows. The arrows were a hit or miss. The scales of the Drowned offered protection against piercing attacks. The few that struck at least did some damage. Maxwell and the other mages were sending their spells at the boss. Magical was surprisingly affective. The boss screamed as fireballs and blades of wind hit her.

I lined up my own attacks when I felt I had a good shot. I was hesitant before about using death magic in front of Maxwell and the others, but none of them seemed to care. Or more likely, they thought that it was part of my darkness skill set. Either way, I was able to do some heavy damage to the monsters thanks to my death magic.

That might have been the case before, but when my shot hit the boss this time, she lost her mind. She screamed with renewed fury. “You! You took everything from me with your promises!” The veiled eyes of the boss turned to face me even as I was cloaked in darkness. I barely had time to dodge out of the way as a stream of pressurized water ripped through the ground where I was standing.

The near beam-like stream of water followed me as I tried to get away. What sort of cheat level skill was this?! I wasn’t about to take it laying down. I charged my own pistols to fire back at the boss as she tore around the room after me. The rest of the party was able to recover their position thanks to me being a distraction. They started to use their skills and spells, but nothing, not even the taunt skills of the tanks was able to pull the boss’s attention from me.

As I twisted to turn at the edge of the room, my foot slipped on a puddle of water. I crashed to my side on the ground, surely bruising it in the process. The jet of water sliced through my leg. I was suddenly overwhelmed with pain from the severed limb. That, more than anything, pushed me to get out of the way of the jet of water before it could slice through my neck. I wasn’t ready to expression my first death just yet.

I screamed as I leveled my pistols at the boss’s face and unloaded as many death spells as I could in a span of a few seconds. The rest of the party also hammered her with dozens of spells and skills. She was only a meter from me when the boss fell, her and the two heads screaming the entire time to the ground in front of me. When she died, a ghost like figure rose from her body before it rushed at me.

As if passed through me, I was able to witness the events of the ruin. This was a manor for a lord long before the forest had earned the name Great Forest. There were hundreds of subject and knights. They weren’t wealthy, but most would say they were happy. One day a man came to the land and managed to entice the wife of the lord. He offered her power, money, beauty, and more.

After she fell for his sweet words, she murdered her family by drowning her children and then slitting her husband’s throat. When the man reappeared, he made her into a demon. The man was a Demon Lord. It wasn’t the one that I had painted nor was it the Demon Lord of Contracts. As the woman changed in front of me, she uttered his name. Reaven, the Demon Lord of Avarice. She had a change of heart right at the last minute and the transformation was twisted turning her people into the Drowned.

It was a terrible tale and was in poor taste. I rolled over and gasped for air. Not from the vision, but from the pressure on my link that the vision caused. At least the pain in my leg had faded. You weren’t even supposed to feel pain in this bloody game! A debuff icon was in the corner of my eye giving me a visual reminder that I had lost half of my left leg.

“Kaga! Are you alright?!” Rowena asked kneeling next to me. I didn’t refuse her aid as she rolled me over.

Taking a few deep breaths, I nodded. “Yep. Just fine. You got to love those cutscenes.”

“Oh. You’ll have to tell me later,” Rowena said with a chuckle.

“Sure thing. For now, can you grab my leg?” I asked, pointing at the appendage.

Someone from the Jade Collective brought it over. I pulled out a healing potion and poured it on the wound. I then pushed my severed leg against the stump. After a few moments during which I felt some tingling, I was able to move my toes. “Not all better, but good enough,” I said after about a minute.

“Glad to see that our experiments didn’t go to waste,” Razz commented as he drank a health potion.

“Only someone like you would actually test cutting off their limbs to figure out what to do about it,” I grumbled as I put weight on the limb. When it held, I took a deep breath. I was worried that this being a homunculus might cause the healing to have issues.

With the bosses defeated, the looting started. There were about ten pieces between the pair. Combined with the gear that we got from the earlier sections of the dungeon, most of the party got an upgrade. Maxwell brought over a ring that improved Dark magic manipulation for me. I accepted it with thanks.

The party made their way back to the entrance. Everyone got ready to teleport everyone back, but I backed away. “I’ll make my way back on foot. I want to scout around here as well.”

“You sure?” Maxwell asked. “Its over a hundred kilometers from here to the town.”

“I’m sure.” I waved him off. “Besides, that’s only about two hours with my movement skills.”

“If you say so,” Maxwell remarked. He gathered the rest of the party up then teleported away.

“Finally,” I said once they were all gone.

“My thoughts exactly,” Zaras said as he and Count Drac along with a small army of Greater Vampires emerged from the forest nearby.

“Ah. Zaras. How I’ve missed you,” I hummed as I leaned my head against him. “We might be creatures of gore and death, but you smell tens times better compared to those stupid goblins. You would think as players, they would know how to take a freaking bath.”

“We could smell them from nearly a kilometer away, my queen,” Count Drac added.

“I’ve learned of an elf town to the south. After we finish here, I want you to find it.”

“As you wish, my queen,” Zaras and Count Drac said at the same time.

With the future orders out of the way, we turned and headed into the dungeon. In true game fashion, the dungeon had already reset. Count Drac and the Greaters made easy work of the Drowned. My vampires were a lot more durable than the players at least when it came to physical confrontations. Red and blue blood sprayed in the air as the two forces quite literally bit into each other as they fought.

Zaras and the greater vampires that used magic were showing their skill as well. Frozen blood icicles impaled Drowned left and right. Death magic and dark magic made the already dim light nearly greyed out. If we didn’t all have night vision, we would have had trouble seeing in some of the rooms.

Roughly an hour passed before we reached the boss’s room again. Everything had reset here as well. Count Drac, Zaras, and the others had already slain the boss once, and I had done so earlier today, so we all knew what to expect. The battle went about as expected. A few Greater vampires took the brunt of the damage with one dying from an unlucky strike to the head, but that was the worst of the damage.

I made sure not to use death magic against the wife phase of the boss, so I was able to avoid the crazy enragement that happened earlier. My vampires used blood magic to heal each other. Unlike the player party, just about every member of my party were able to heal each other since vampires came equipped with blood magic. A bit cheaty, but the game was never designed for something like this to take place. Not that I was going to complain to anyone.

“Now then,” I said as I dried my hands off. “Time to find the core.”

A good ten minutes went by when Zaras called me over to a section of the wall. A wall painting covered it nicely, showing the family that was at the root of the story here. Zaras placed his hand against the head of one of the children in the painting. A rune lit up before the painting began to move to the side.

Being careful, we headed into the hidden passage. There was a downward slope that pushed us further under the lake. When it leveled out, we came to what looked like a dead end, except for the pool in front of us. That was pretty smart, a nature barrier of sorts. “I guess we’re swimming,” I said before I jumped into the pool.

I hadn’t swum in ten years, so it took a minute to come back to me. Just being digital didn’t make it easy. After a bit of a struggle, I started moving forward. It took me nearly four minutes to reach the end of the flooded tunnel. I was glad that this body didn’t technically have to breathe, but the sensation of pressure on my lungs was unpleasant all the same.

Coming to the surface, I pulled myself up on the ledge. Zaras and Count Drac pulled themselves out next to me. I had to quickly look away from the pair as I found it hard not to burst out laughing at their appearance. Zaras was dressed in robes and looked like a drowned rat as the cloth stuck to him, while Count Drac had water pouring out of his armor from dozens of places. I was impressed that they had managed to swim with that getup at all.

Looking around the room, I found it was the end of the road. The Lake Ruin core floated in the middle of the room over a pedestal. I thought it was in poor taste, as the pedestal was made from two headless bodies. Judging from their size, it was easy to assume that they were the wife’s children. Ignoring the nasty decoration, I walked over and placed my hand on the core.

--

Accessing Core Data. Access granted to Dungeon Master. Dungeon: Lake Ruin.

Owner: N/A

Dungeon Core: Drowned

Level:7

Mana:574/7,000

Claim dungeon ownership: Y/N?

--

I clicked yes, of course. There was a change in the air as my claim asserted itself. Moving over to the wall, I took a set then let my mind return to my real body. Then with a quick use of Shadow Walk, I teleported over to the Lake Ruin dungeon. Using Death Sight, I checked how far my influence expanded. I was able to move through a good chunk of the forest now.

Dungeon Core Claimed: Lake Ruin.

You have claimed three Dungeon cores as a dungeon master. You are the first in the world to achieve such a feat! Your prowess as a Dungeon Master continues to grow! One free monster unlock awarded.

I wasn’t too worried about getting more monsters to summon at the moment, but it was nice to have it at my disposal. My vampires were almost too versatile. Again, not that I was going to complain. I looked over to Count Drac. “You know the deal. I’ll have a replacement ready for you at Nature’s Grotto.”

“Yes, my queen,” Count Drac bowed.

I nodded appreciatively, then walked over to my Kaga body. I picked it up then looked over to Zaras. “Want a ride back to the dungeon?” I asked.

“I’ll stay and scout around here,” he replied. “You never know what sort of threat might be hiding for us.”

“Sounds good.” I paid to have skilled help. Using Shadow Walk, I moved myself and my Kaga body back to my main dungeon. That would save me two hours’ worth of walking back to the town.