NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 9 – Dungeon Core
The deeper we got into the dungeon, the thicker the shadows became.
Soon, a giant shadow darker than black roared. Whichever monster our expedition had awakened, it was wicked and quickly coming our way.
The hissing of the cat girls got more erratic, but Belfar remained unflinching.
“Halt!” He said, raising his right arm.
The ground shook with the resounding clomp of marching boot coming to a sudden halt. Good to their training, a line of demi-humans formed a tight formation in front of Belfar. Raising their poleaxes like spears, they made a phalanx of death. But in truth, their formation was our lifeline. Without it, the monster was going to swallow us all.
With a single swing of her hand, Allisa launched most of our sources of light forward, deep into the hallway.
Soon, the giant shadow was exposed. Revealing a grotesque maroon of flesh-eating worms. Thousands of these little shrimp sized creatures had come together to form a fat, humanoid looking behemoth - which charged at us with hunger.
A cat-girl tried to break formation, but Belfar kicked her back into her spot.
“Fire!” Belfar ordered.
I heard Allisa as she chanted some elf-sounding intonation.
Then, in a blinding flash; the entirety of the hallway was lit in a freezing blue tornado as hundreds of fist-sized ice stalagmites were flung forward at increasingly high speeds.
The storm hit the monster with such an unforgiving ferocity that the behemoth looked like a meatball being pulled apart.
“Charge!” Belfar yelled.
There was no mercy given to the worms that still crawled forward, nor to the worms that had fallen behind.
I myself burned a few of these creatures to dust.
“The dungeon core should not be so far,” Belfar said, as Leah began giving each demi-human a few health potions.
“What makes you so sure of that?” I asked.
Allisa showed me the map.
On the next floor, we were attacked by cat-sized worms that crawled through the walls.
They proved to be good target practice for my staff.
“Are all dungeons this nasty?” I asked.
“Some but not all. It really depends on the dungeon core. You got Wild, Monster and Demon cores. The names are a bit self-explanatory. Wild cores normally have no dungeon master, and are inhabited mostly by Gaia type creatures. Demon cores are owned by powerful entities of evil alignments, such as necromancers or actual demons,” Belfar said.
“And monster cores?”
Belfar raised his arms to the ceiling and danced. “We are inside one, my lady,”
One of the demi-humans gave Belfar a hit on the ribs. Leah seemed to be happy about this.
“Monster cores are like women. You never know what you are getting, and in the worst of cases, they can be really nasty like this,” Belfar said. Just having regained his breath.
I saw as Allisa rolled her eyes. Belfar’s comment was too complex for Leah or the demi-humans to understand.
“Why do adventurers attack cores?” I asked.
My question made Belfar smile.
“It is the only way to move up the ladder,” He said. “Experience, prestige, riches. You will see once we reach the core. Which, if I am not mistaken, should be on the next floor.”
For all the talk about riches, the dungeon core room was devoid of gold.
“What is that smell!?” I said.
“Allisa, do me the honor,” Belfar said.
The brown sphere floating in the middle of the room exploded into smaller crystals, which then lost their color.
“Is that it? Where are the treasure or riches that you spoke about? Where is the dungeon master?”
“Ah, that? Look over there,”
Belfar pointed towards a corpse. The rotting corpse of a man.
“Eww.”
“As for riches, it seems someone beat us to them. I guess we will have to leave empty-handed and be happy with the experience that we got,” Belfar said, before pulling a rune from his pockets and incinerated the corpse.
When the corpse turned into a dust, only a black gauntlet remained. Without hesitation, Belfar picked it up.
“Like I told you, with monster cores, you never know what you will get. The man must have died horrified at turning into worm food. Then the core absorbed his fear. As for what killed the man, likely he got cocky while exploring the dungeon while it still had a wild core,” He continued.
As we left the dungeon, we were no longer attacked by monsters. Not a single monster attacked us. It felt wrong, to say the least.
My mind kept telling me that Belfar must be lying about something. If someone already had beaten the dungeon, why did they not smash the core? Why did no one bury the corpse?
Once we were back in the forest, I counted how many demi-humans Belfar had. Not counting Leah or myself, he had exactly sixteen of them.
“How much is each health potion worth?” I asked.
“A silver coin each,” Allisa responded. “Why?”
But I did not give her a response.
“Lord Belfar, if I was a farm boy. How many silver coins would I need to spend a full week in a city, eating, drinking and staying at an inn?”
This question made Belfar smile.
“Hmm? what a rather interesting question. What do you say Allisa?” He asked the elf, but she did not respond.
“I personally think that ten silver coins would suffice,” Belfar said. “But do tell me, where did this question come from?”
It was my turn to attack.
“You see, with sixteen demi-humans, each using at least five health potions through our dungeon dive. How many coins is that? A hundred? That seems quite a bit of coin for no reward. Yet, you do not seem upset at all. Is Lord Belfar that wealthy?”
Belfar looked at Allisa and laughed. She seemed to be trembling.
“As an Adventurer, you can’t always win all your battles. You get used to it,” He said.
This man had cheated me somehow. But I had no means to prove it.
