FINDERS KEEPERS

Part 1

Maxine trudged through the woods while I nestled inside her jacket’s pocket, guiding the way. She carried a shovel with her. I guessed I shouldn’t be surprised that a cultist had a spare shovel in her trunk, probably to bury a body at a moment’s notice. Maxine seemed like the type of person who came prepared for a gunfight. All of PHPD were looking for the red Ford Explorer.

We had been walking for four hours now, but the demon never tired nor complained about the trek toward the foot of Mount Selene, the second tallest mountain in Oregon, rising for almost eleven thousand feet.

A dormant steep-sided stratovolcano and part of the Cascade Range, Mount Selene killed forty-nine people when it erupted back in the seventies, leveling a good portion of the forest with ash and sending almost sixty-thousand-foot plume into the sky. That didn’t include the number of climbers who died during the ascent to its peak for over a century. Though it might not be as tall and gigantic as Denali, Foraker, Fairweather, or the other mountains in the country, all routes leading to the top were considered treacherous and deadly and only recommended for experienced climbers, buffeted by strong winds and surprise storms. The weather in the valley was unpredictable—sunny in the morning and a rainstorm by the afternoon.

Even the surrounding forest got a history of missing hikers and campers due to grizzly bear and mountain lion attacks. I’ve heard plenty of rumors that the mob and gangs affiliated with the cartel drove out here just to dump the bodies of their victims. I didn’t know if it was true, but it was enough to scare people around the area. It’s large enough to dump a body in.

Bodies like mine, I thought bitterly.

For us locals, we just called it Hell’s Peak.

And it was a perfect place to build my dungeon.

“Stop,” I commanded.

Maxine stopped in her tracks.

“I’ll take a look around,” I said.

Grasping my many-eyes, I zoomed out of the forest, breaking through the canopy with my consciousness, and faced the south side of Mount Selene’s picturesque snow-capped peak. It didn’t look like Hell. It was beautiful. Tranquil.

Cascadia Lodge was a mountain ski resort popular in winter and early spring on the northern side. Technically, it was popular all year round for corporate retreats, college students, and family gatherings. Our senior retreat after we graduate was going to be held there. I frowned that I would never get to experience it. There were also several beginner and intermediate trails for avid hikers and plenty of scenic campgrounds. The north side was always busy. I could only see up to a couple of miles from Maxine’s location, and I couldn’t get a glimpse of the lodge from this side of the mountain. Mount Selene’s broad flanks covered almost fourteen miles.

As for the southern side, it hosted a few ‘adventurous’ trails and most of the climbing routes leading up to Selene’s peak. However, few people traversed the area, except for the more daring ones. Swathes of McLaren Forest hadn’t been explored thoroughly, after all. An expanse of Douglas fir, hemlock, and pines as far as the eye could see. At the most southern tip was Point Hope, glittering like a faint beacon under the fading afternoon sky.

I spotted the nearest hiking trail from Maxine’s location was about two miles away. It didn’t look like it had much traffic going through it. Ten miles westward, I could barely see Highway 26 and the offshoot dirt road where Maxine left the red Ford Explorer. I turned east, where I spotted the rest of the Cascade Mountain Range and Cedar Lake, a fifteen hundred acre body of water just over three miles from Maxine’s location, and fed into the Clackamas River. A small off-beaten road leads back to Highway 26 from the lake’s southern side.

Hell’s Peak to the North. Highway 26 to the West. Cedar Lake to the East. Point Hope to the South. I liked what I saw.

I went back to Maxine. “Move northeast. Continue for another mile or two. You will see a lake,” I said.

Maxine nodded and continued walking for another hour until we reached the northern side of Cedar Lake.

I smiled. “This is it. This is where I’ll build.”

Maxine nodded over to the other side of the lake. “I see buildings, my liege,” she said.

“Ah. That’s Cedar Pine Summer Camp. It used to be owned by the Gradys, but when Old Man Grady died three years ago, his wife and sons tried to sell the place, but there was no buyer for a long time. Now, it’s rotting.”

One of my favorite summer memories was in that place. I remembered the gauntlet race Old Man Grady used to host, where we had to swim to the island in the middle of the lake, find a colored flag, and then row a boat back to camp. The winner gets one of those disposable fifty-dollar Visa cards and extra scoops of ice cream during chow. My friends and I would hit up the arcade, watch a movie, and then buy root beer floats at Josey’s once we got back to town.

“No one would bother us here,” I said.

“But you need essence,” Maxine said. “As I’ve said in the car, you need to be closer to town or even that ski resort to lure people in easily.”

“The only essence I want are the people who murdered me, demon,” I said. “As what I’m going to do after that…I haven’t gotten that far.”

“I sense you do not want people to come here, my liege.”

Damn, these demons. They’re always so insightful. “Yeah, because I’ll be murdering them.” Now that I calmed down during the drive out of town, the reality of what I had done in Green Hill hit me like a fucking truck.

“For you to survive,” the demon reassured me. “You are still at a juvenile stage, my liege. You are still starving. You need more essence, or you will die.”

“I said I haven’t gotten that far yet. Let me worry about what happens once I get rid of the cult,” I said, annoyed.

Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t want to die. But ever since I got stuck inside this gem, I feared death with obsession. I didn’t know if it was an after-effect of my being a dungeon core or not, but it had exacerbated my fear a hundredfold. There was no way to stop it, like I was forever stuck in a fight-or-flight mode. All I wanted to do was burrow deep into the earth, hide, and build.

Build. That feeling kept growing and growing when I dismantled the Yates Residence. It was all I could think about during the drive.

“First, we will build the dungeon here, okay?”

“As you wish, my liege.”

I opened up the prompt. The Monsters, Dungeons, and Traps tabs were grayed out again as inaccessible.

[Discovery (Potential Dungeon): North Cedar Lake.]

[Would you like to designate North Cedar Lake as your dungeon?]

“Designate North Cedar Lake as my dungeon.”

[You created a dungeon!]

[Unique Location: Picturesque Lake]

[Rank (Z): #2641 > #2595]

[Power: 10/10]

[You received: 100 crystals]

[Dungeons are now accessible]

[Monsters are now accessible]

[Traps are now accessible]

Well, at least I got extra crystals. That brought me to two thousand total, hopefully enough to create the dungeon I wanted.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

“May I ask a question, my liege?” The demon asked.

“Shoot.”

“Why the woods?”

“Huh?”

“The woods. There is an ideal mountain range not too far from here. You can burrow through and hide your gem and protect it with caverns and winding corridors. It will be a perfect place to house your core.”

“As much as I wanted to stay underground, I’ve never been good with the dark.”

The demon seemed surprised by my revelation, raising its eyebrow and slightly leaning forward, intrigued. I wondered if it genuinely expected me not to fear anything.

“And besides, I like the woods. It’s…me. I hike. I camp. I eat s’mores during the summer. My dad would take me deer hunting sometimes in these parts. I would go skiing with my friends during the winter. I had my first beer during a high school bonfire not far from here. I spent six weeks of my summer at that abandoned summer camp before they closed for seven years of my life. So I don’t want to live deep underground where I can’t feel the sun anymore. If I’m going to be stuck in this gem forever, I wanted to be out here, moving with the wind, you know?”

Maxine remained expressionless. I doubted demons would suddenly grow a little bit of empathy. It looked like it was annoyed I wasn’t doing an excellent job of protecting myself.

“Also, we don’t have dedicated adventurers here, demon. Not like in other worlds where they delve through dungeons looking for treasures like it’s a job. I reckon that’s about the case?”

Maxine nodded. “Plenty of cities build wealthy guilds around powerful and prosperous dungeons.”

“Well, this is Earth, and we do things differently here. Not many people know what I am to look for me. We don’t have adventuring guilds. Not many people do magic or wield swords. We have clubs—Hiking, water sports, skiing, mountain climbing, camping, mushroom hunters, and survivalist groups. All the outdoorsy stuff you could think of is all around us. If—” I paused. “—If I get hungry for essence, I can lure those people who got lost in me, took a wrong turn, went off the beaten path, and ended up at a place they won’t suspect.”

“And what’s that, my liege?”

“A cabin.”

Grasping [levitate], I flew out of Maxine’s pocket, moving toward an empty clearing on top of a rocky outcrop. If I looked directly from the abandoned summer camp, several bigger trees obscured the area. But it left enough space to get a great view of the lake and the mountain range if I erected the building here.

“I’ll build a cabin on this spot.”

I pulled up the [Dungeons] tab and reviewed what I needed. Fortunately, the sunset wasn’t until 7:43 PM; I had at least three more hours of daylight to build the cabin. I don’t have to wait weeks to finish it when you have magic money!

My dungeon was a two-mile-wide radius, centered around the cabin, large enough to involve parts of the lake and the nearby woods.

I started small. I only had two thousand crystals to spare and still had to build traps. I dug ten feet through the earth, which would become my cellar, then I placed wooden floors to cover it, leaving a gap for a cellar door on the floor.

I decided to create a one-story cabin with two bedrooms. An ample enough space for a shared dining and living area with a mason-bricked chimney. A kitchen with a small pantry. A covered front porch. A mud room with a screened door leading out to a back deck overlooking the beautiful lake. And then one bathroom with a washer and dryer. There were billions of items on the list; some I couldn’t pronounce and so alien to my tongue that I had to ask the core only to show me Earth-made items.

Furnishing it was much easier and cheaper. Maybe the other dungeons weren’t too concerned with the delver’s comfort, choosing to build narrow hallways with poisoned dart traps, which netted four hundred crystals, compared to a queen-sized bed for five. Or a cavern that looked like a temple, complete with ancient statues, demonic mosaics, rune-inscribed pillars, and plenty more for a thousand.

With the furnishings, the cabin only cost me three hundred crystals. I even excavated the land around it to create a dirt road, connecting it to the road on the southern side of the lake. I built a short hiking trail from the cabin to the lake’s shore, where I erected a small boathouse, canoes, and a fire pit. Outside the cabin, I made a small tool shed and left a decent area empty for parking. As an added touch, I put a fence around the cabin with the sign: NO TRESPASSING. PRIVATE PROPERTY!

Once everything was done, it looked like any cozy cabin in the woods, far from civilization. The last thing I built was the cable wires to connect it to the electrical grid. And voila! As the sun set over the horizon, I had electricity and internet.

The demon ran her hands on the porch’s support columns, knocking on the wood.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I prefer the caverns, my liege,” the demon said. “But the cabin looks…homely.”

“It’s meant for the delvers.”

“You are building them a house to sleep in?”

“More than that,” I said. “Um, when we contact the cultists, they’ll go here. We’ll lead them far away from town. Far from any signs of help. This will be their only shelter.”

“Shelter,” the demon whispered. “But not really a shelter.”

“No. It will be a trap. There’s no phone signal, so they wouldn’t be able to call for help. All I had to do is shut off the wifi, and they are in the dark.”

I created a few traps as well. They weren’t as elaborate (and expensive) as the “Spinning Death Wheel” but like the rug from the Yates Residence masquerading as a household object. I added the rug trap near the front door to prevent anyone from escaping. I also made the stairs breakable, triggering only if a delver tried to flee a monster from down there. The windows would clamp shut if a delver attempted to escape that way. I was also inspired by the demon’s trick of using the electrical wires, dangling a delver off the floor. I placed that in the living area with the ceiling fan that could fall and knock someone out.

Outside, I strategically placed the bear traps and the nets under the leaves and dirt and hung hooks from trees. If the cultists managed to reach their car and drive away, I could trigger a tree to fall in the middle of the dirt road, trapping them in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the dark. They had no choice but to return to the house.

Back to me.

“Where would you like to put your core, my liege?” Maxine asked. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to stay in the cabin with the delvers and be within their reach.”

I nodded. “I found a better spot. I want you to take me there.”

I guided Maxine deeper into the woods, about a quarter of a mile from the cabin, and told her to stop before a dying oak tree.

Towering for over sixty feet, its gnarled trunk, once thick and robust, was now riddled with deep cracks and crevices, serving as silent reminders of the countless seasons it had weathered. Once rough and sturdy, its bark had turned a dull gray, peeling away in patches to reveal the frailty beneath. Moss and lichen clung desperately to the rough surface as if desperately trying to breathe life into the dying giant. The tree’s branches were now bare, stripped of their foliage. A few scattered leaves, pale and lifeless, clung precariously to the skeletal limbs. They rustled weakly in the night breeze.

Perfect. “Put me inside there,” I said.

The demon smiled. She didn’t like the cabin’s cozy atmosphere but seemed to love the creepy tree. Maxine put me into a crevice, and I sank deeper into the tree. Licks of the weave flowed out of me, gently caressing the tree’s insides, extending out some of its cracked fissures to close and swallow me. The tree became my armor.

In an instant, I felt the land breathing underneath—the light breeze, multiple branches creaking, the waters lapping from the lake and the nearby river, insects humming, squirrels chattering, and so much more. I sensed the new cabin, the dirt road, the few hiking trails, the boathouse, and the main road down the south. I could even see parts of the abandoned summer camp from the borders.

Even the dying oak tree seemed to…change. It creaked more ominously against the wind. As the sun continued to go down, its distorted silhouette merged with the encroaching darkness, creating an otherworldly sight. Shadows danced and flickered around the tree, casting strange and distorted shapes upon the ground. Occasionally, a weak gust of wind would rustle through the decaying leaves at the bottom, producing a haunting whisper that seemed to echo through the lonely forest.

“You look magnificent, my liege,” the demon said.

“You still have the shovel?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Find my body. I reckon you know where it is? It’s not far from here.” Maxine nodded. “Good. Dig me up and bring me to the cabin. Take a picture of my corpse using Maxine’s phone and send a group text to the cult with the picture. Tell them to go to the cabin and that you are alive and waiting for them.”

“And if they bring more friends?”

“You mean the police?”

“Yes.”

“They won’t. If they do, they will find the body and perform an autopsy on my corpse, which will incriminate all of them. They’ll go alone to get rid of the evidence for good. Once they get here, you two will be waiting for them.”

“Two of us, my liege?”

I smiled. “You won’t be alone for long.” I turned to the northern side of the clearing and summoned the monster I made with the cabin. “Come closer.”

Demon Maxine followed where my consciousness went and looked northward. A towering giant of a man emerged from the shadows, strolling with heavy steps and dragging a double-sided wood axe. The demon shrieked and cackled with excitement, jumping and twirling. “More! More!”

The stranger approached into sun’s fading the light.

THE GOLIATH

Dread Score: 4/10

Creature Type: Humanoid

Cooldown: 1 week

Weapon(s): Double-sided Axe; Hunting Knife

Special Traits

Mask Wielder I

A mask goes a long way to cause instant fear. Send chills through the minds of the delvers. Masks also heighten their senses, making them aware of the proximity to their closest delver.

Brute Strength I

The monster exudes considerable strength above and beyond a normal human and can easily shed through a delver’s defenses.

Not Quite Dead I

Kick them. Stab them. Bludgeon them. They get right back up for another strike. The monster is harder to kill, and it will take considerable effort for the delvers to take the creature down. Every time the monster gets up, it depletes their Resolve over time. (Stun Duration: 1 minute)

He wore a dark brown trench coat, a nice-looking suit and a black tie underneath, a pair of hiking boots, and a dull-white fox mask covering his entire face to complete his creepy getup. He let the axe rest to the side, hand gripping the tail end of the handle while he breathed audibly through the mask. An interesting thing about [Humanoid] archetypes was that you get to choose what weapons they wield. He studied Maxine curiously before regarding me again.

“Meet the Goliath, demon,” I said. Demon Maxine waved.

The Goliath nodded slowly and grunted. I didn’t give him a special speech trait, so he could only grunt in response. I didn’t need him to speak anyway. I wanted him to stop any of the cultists from leaving the woods.

“Okay, demon, you can go and fetch my body now. As for you, Goliath, I have a plan, and I need you to listen carefully.”