Everyone turned at once to see what had prompted the exclamation. Dominic saw it immediately: the portal to the dungeon was rapidly vanishing before their eyes, waves rippling through it like multiple pebbles striking a liquid surface.
With each ripple that passed, the door became less and less real; nothing could have persuaded him to touch it in that moment in case it took him with it. Before more than a few more seconds had passed, nothing but the solid, bare rock of the kopje remained, the whole metallic disc gone like it had never existed. Even the tunnel that he remembered being there the first time he had visited wasn’t in evidence.
‘If the dungeon is gone, what are we going to do?’ asked one of the swordsmen. His intense violet eyes looked almost bruised, set against creamy skin and with slightly darker purple hair.
‘How are we going to get what we need if we can’t get into the dungeon?’ asked the other swordsman. His colouration was quite striking – dark skin like ebony and blond hair that was almost white. His silver eyes practically gleamed in the light, adding an otherworldliness to his appearance.
Berion looked over the members of the Pride with a measuring look, his gaze then coming to rest on Dominic.
‘Honoured Brothers and Sisters, might I ask how far in the dungeon you had reached?’
Dominic hesitated for a long moment. The answer would be telling in more ways than one.
‘We had just defeated the final boss when the dungeon started collapsing upon us. We had to run for our lives to reach the portal before we were killed,’ Dominic finally answered half-truthfully. There were many reasons for asking the question, yet he had to wonder if the elf suspected that they were the ones who destroyed the dungeon.
If so, it would imply that they had seen the final message after defeating the boss. Or had some other source of knowledge about dungeons, that was possible too. If they had defeated the spider boss, that would definitely indicate they could fight toe-to-toe with Dominic and his dungeon pride. If so, he’d better be careful with them.
His words evoked a number of wordless exclamations with more than one of the elves seeming surprised.
‘Your group succeeded against the final guardian?’ the elf with the violet eyes asked, his gaze fixed on the large lion. There was no hint of a smile on his face, only intense focus, strong enough to almost make Dominic take a step back.
‘We did,’ he answered, his fur bristling slightly in reaction at their disbelief despite himself. His lips lifted slightly off his teeth, even though he did his best to lower them again. ‘Have you not?’ he asked in return – if they were strong enough to do so, Dominic would like to know it.
The elf gave an incredulous snort.
‘That creature? The only party ever to take it on ran away when their first member was killed before they had even been able to land a blow. Only fools take on the final guardian.’
Interesting. And slightly relieving. Though it still begged the question about how they knew about destroying dungeons. When did they discover this dungeon? Before or after it ranked up? Though the warthog had been a challenge, with a larger party and spears, it would definitely have been an easier task to kill than the redback had been.
‘Talathon,’ Berion chided the swordsman quietly. ‘Apologies again, honoured Brother. He can sometimes be…intense. No offence is meant.’
‘Then none taken,’ Dominic answered carefully, doing his best to make his hackles go down. It wasn’t so much that there had been a threat, but more a feeling that the elf had been sizing him up, wondering if he could win in a fight. It made the leonine parts of him growl at the implicit challenge.
‘However, forgive me for asking, but…when you defeated the final guardian, were you presented with a choice?’
So he did suspect Dominic’s party of destroying the dungeon. Now, how to respond. He could always pretend that it had been an accident, or that it had just happened automatically – the elves surely didn’t know what happened if a beast defeated a dungeon, even if they knew what happened when an elf did.
Then again, that could cause issues for him later – he fully intended on having dungeons on his land, and if they succeeded in having a more enduring relationship with the elves, it was bound to come out that beasts could defeat a dungeon without automatically destroying it.
‘Just tell them the truth,’ suggested Leo impatiently. ‘We know that they do not want to fight us. We have nothing to lose.’
‘Except a potential relationship with the elves in the future,’ pointed out Dominic.
‘And if you lie now and they find out later, what do you think that will do?’ Leo demanded impatiently. ‘Isn’t your human media full of tales about lies being found out and that causing chaos?’
‘Good point,’ Dominic admitted. How come the lion was telling him how to human? Then again, he supposed that using the easy lie in the present and storing up problems for the future was being human. Looking straight at Berion, he pulled himself to his full height. ‘Yes, I chose to destroy the dungeon, if that is what your question is about,’ he answered defiantly.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
The elves immediately reacted. Berion appeared both grimly satisfied with having his conclusions confirmed and devastated at the same. The sword-user with the violet eyes cursed while the other seemed to sag where he stood. Pelir’s face twisted in anger again and she started to raise her bow. Fortunately, Berion’s hand shot out to stop it lifting enough to point at anything but the ground. The spear-wielding Ruthror turned and stormed back towards the front of the group.
‘I told you we should kill them all! Now this is why!’
‘Ruthror, peace,’ Berian told him tiredly, his voice without the force it had had earlier. Strangely enough, though, it was enough to stop Ruthror continuing. One look at his face had the other spear-wielder quieten, the rage and pain that filled his face dissolving into sorrow.
The leader closed his eyes, seeming to try to get ahold of his emotions. Curiously, it felt like they were all captivated by the elf. Even Dominic’s Pride members had stopped growling and had straightened up. It was like the situation was on a knife’s edge with the deciding factor how this one leader would react.
‘Honoured Brother,’ Berian started as he once more opened his eyes, his voice almost too low for Dominic to be able to hear it. Fortunately, however his telepathy worked, even the quiet voice was still clear to the lion. ‘You have done us more wrong than you know. We may have killed three of your pride, but you have killed our hopes. And not only our hopes, but those of our entire community. I humbly ask you to help us as repayment.’
‘Repayment?!’ Leo scoffed at Dominic. ‘Why should we make repayment for merely taking what is our due? We defeated the dungeon; we were given the choice. We chose to destroy it. If these weak elves wished to keep their dungeon, they should have guarded it better. A lion who does not guard his pride cannot complain if another lion comes and takes it from him.’
It was odd. Before the lion had started speaking, Dominic had felt guilty, as though he’d done something shameful and owed the elf for it. But now that Leo pointed it out…yes. If the dungeon had been so important for the elves, they should have made sure it was guarded from others entering and potentially taking it from them. Heck, there hadn’t even been any indications that they claimed it as their property!
It was like the elf had cast a spell with his words which the straight-forward thinking of the lion had been able to overcome. Or perhaps it was really magic – in this new world, who knew? If he could Hypnotise beings with movements or flash forwards through objects, who was he to say the elf couldn’t be capable of casting a literal spell with his words.
‘Thanks Leo,’ he said gratefully.
‘Always happy to bring you back to earth,’ the lion replied tartly. ‘Now, how are you going to deal with this since apparently you still want to have a relationship with them for some reason?’
It appeared that the doubts weren’t only on Dominic’s side either. Behind Berion, Dominic saw that the rest of the elven party had fallen into talking amongst themselves. Interestingly, Dominic found that he could still pick up snatches of what they were saying, though not huge amounts.
It was a bit like he was listening to a murmured conversation, only the most emphasised words differentiating themselves enough for him to understand them. Their speech was very melodic, almost sounding like they were singing while merely speaking. It rather reminded him of some of the languages he’d heard since landing in the main Johannesburg airport. There were even some punctuating clicking sounds.
‘...help against…beasts….’
‘...be mad.’
‘... Why would he help…’
‘...dungeon gone, our crafters won’t…no weapons, no armour…die.’
‘...murdered Ialeth!’
‘...be stupid…kill everyone else?’
‘Honoured Brother, do you have an answer for me?’ asked Berian, interrupting Dominic’s focus with a patient reminder of the question he had asked.
‘If you want our help, first, tell me what your problem is,’ Dominic suggested. ‘Why is destroying this dungeon such a big thing?’
Berion obliged, perhaps seeing his question as a good sign.
‘We come from a community who are under siege by beasts such as yourself and your…group. We are not fighters and though our crafters are excellent, since the arrival of the System and our displacement, they no longer have access to key resources which they need. The dungeon offered resources and even some fully-formed weapons which have been essential to allowing us to continue even this long. Now that you have destroyed it, our lifeline is gone – and with it, all our hopes.’
‘And what would you want me to do?’ Dominic asked neutrally.
‘You are clearly strong. If you would come and help defend us, we might have the time to develop new strategies and magics which could win against our foes.’
Dominic hesitated – the dungeon Core was once more burning a proverbial hole in his storage space. What he’d learned about them was that he only had a limited window of time to get it back to his Place of Power before it would dissolve. It was a matter of days, not hours, but still, it was limited.
Dissolution wasn’t necessarily a bad thing: the dissolution of a Core guaranteed at least one dungeon appearing within a few square kilometres of the original. And, in a way, perhaps that was an answer to the elves’ problem. The dungeon might take a while to reestablish itself, but they would be able to start running it soon enough.
The problem was that that wouldn’t work for Dominic. He was hoping that, since he’d damaged his Mana Heart and Soul within the dungeon, right in front of its Core, part of that would have been absorbed by the Core. Selessa thought that there was a very high possibility of that having happened, especially since it was a G-rated dungeon and therefore far more open and susceptible to external influences than higher ranked dungeons.
Adding the Core to his Place of Power would be both beneficial for the Place of Power and also might offer him something that could help him repair some of the damage he had sustained. The alternatives were a lot more difficult to achieve, so he was definitely crossing his claws that Selessa’s assumptions were right, especially since he now had another Ability which used mana.
Those were all the reasons for which he’d destroyed the dungeon in the first place, and he was still determined to see his objectives accomplished. But…not at the cost of damning a whole community of elves.
And at the same time, the idea of going and fighting against a whole load of other beasts….
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ he asked Leo.
‘That there might be enemies to kill to help us get stronger, and females to convince to join our pride?’ Leo asked.
‘No. I mean, yes. I mean, yes to the first one, no to the second. Or at least, I hadn’t considered the second. So, want to go for it?’
‘It seems like a good opportunity,’ agreed Leo, his disinterested tone not fooling Dominic.
‘Alright, then. Let’s work out some logistics.’