FINDERS KEEPERS

Part 5

LEO

Leo drove the van out of the summer camp and took the road back to town. He didn’t have to go far to find the road he was looking for—one that didn’t exist a week ago. He stopped the car in the middle of the three-way junction, peering ahead at where the pavement met the newly-applied gravel road, illuminated only by a single street light.

The darkness beckoned.

Leo looked down at the GPS on his phone. No off-shoot road showed on the screen from where the blue dot—his current location—hovered. He glanced at the road again, confused.

“What’s the hold-up?” John asked, sitting on the passenger seat.

Leo wanted to tell him that they should get out of there and take their chances with Mercer, hoping he would be in a good mood, which he hardly ever was. Leo didn’t want to go to jail. If Eddie did work for the DEA, it would implicate him if Eddie survived the woods and made it back to Portland. He might go into hiding and luck out into witness protection with the FBI, which would give them time to build a solid case around Mercer and his organization. Eddie would be an excellent prime witness that could testify against his cousin and sink him for good.

What would that be for me? Kidnapping charges? Attempted murder? Conspiracy? Felony Assault?

Those were just the things he could think of at the top of his head. He needed the money after he got out of the military, which left him with three bullets to the gut and shoulder, a couple of months at the hospital with several months of extensive physical training after, and then an honorable discharge that couldn’t even pay the bills even with the meager change the VA could dish out for folks like him. Thank you for your service, my ass. From a guy who never went to college, he stared at plenty of minimum-wage jobs that didn’t appeal to him. Even taking an associate’s degree would be costly.

But a handful of powerful and wealthy people sought his unique skillset, the ones he knew he was good at. How to carve a man and the hundreds of ways he could die. It paid the bills. He paid for an electrical technology degree at a community college so that he could become an electrician. Earn an honest job for once. And it also helped put his younger brother, Danny, into a prestigious four-year university down south. He was set to be a doctor, and Leo remembered how proud he was when Danny got top marks for the MCAT.

“Hey, Leo?” John shook his shoulder. “What’s up?”

“I grew up around here for most of my life, John,” Leo said. “And I’ve never driven past that road before. It’s like it just….”

“Just what?”

--Appeared out of thin air. Leo gulped. He didn’t scare easily. He had camped multiple times in the woods alone in the dead of winter with meager supplies for days, hearing the wolves and coyotes howl in the pitch darkness. But this?

This was something new.

Something that he shouldn’t get involved with.

Maybe I never noticed it before. After all, it’s been years since his mom sold the house, and everyone moved out to Portland. Hell, Leo had only been around the property once or twice a year since then. Someone could easily have built a cabin for the past five years and placed that gravel road.

But he was pretty sure it didn’t exist a week ago. He remembered walking along the lake, hiking into the woods, and reminiscing about the old times with Danny. They never saw a cabin. Never saw the gravel road. Never saw that street light.

“Are we moving or what?” Art asked at the back, breaking him out of his thoughts.

Leo looked over to John, who gave him a puzzled arch of his brow. Taking a deep breath through his nose, Leo pushed the gear stick to drive and steered the van onto the narrow gravel road. Under the forest’s thick canopy, the night grew darker.

Leo had a nagging feeling that they were all being watched.

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As Leo and the others entered the gravel road and drove for several hundred feet more, a huge chunk of an Atlas Alder broke off and blocked the way out. It was the first of my new traps that got activated, and I spent a considerable amount of crystals to get a hold of the fake tree so I could put it back and dismantle it over and over. It was supposed to cut off the cultists from the outside world and prevent them from leaving, but Leo and his crew would be a good test run for tomorrow’s events.

And don’t forget to put it back on the tree; I made a mental note. If the cultists arrived tomorrow and found the road blocked by it, that would be so embarrassing.

The four men didn’t even hear the branch crash in the middle of the road.

I watched the van drive across the small rickety wooden bridge over a tributary called Crimson Creek, which fed off Cedar Lake to the large Clackamas River.

As they passed the threshold, the bridge’s trap activated to standby.

At some point tonight, if someone managed to drive away from the dungeon (evading all of my monsters) and reached the bridge, it would collapse underneath them, plunging their vehicle (and them) into seven-foot-deep water. They’d have to swim through murky water to get to the riverbank, blocked by oily-black vines that smelled like rotten days-old flesh and thorny brambles that would weep blood when a delver made contact.

At least that’s what the description said before I bought it from the market.

They would just run into the Alder branch if they braved through the brambles and returned to the gravel road. They had no choice but to go around or over it…where, hopefully, some of the monsters were already waiting.

I made a point to make the gravel road long, winding, and claustrophobic, as if the forest were close to pressing against the van’s windows. It was meant to disorient a delver, and if it was the other way around, it made it challenging to navigate if they tried to escape. I purchased a handful of medium-sized boulders camouflaged by bushes and thickets for five crystals. If someone ran off the road, they’d hit these boulders instead, hopefully totaling their car.

I even made a neat illusion trap for it.

I got inspired by those cheap jump scares in horror movies when a character managed to drive away from the house of horrors, and they’re stupid enough to take their eyes off the road. And suddenly! They look back and—shit!—there’s a person, ghost, killer, or monster standing in the middle of the road, and they swerve to avoid it, reducing their chances of survival by half since they fucked up their vehicle and they could no longer escape, leaving them in the mercy of their pursuers.

I was hoping it would work like that here, too.

For a hundred crystals, I bought the ghostly illusion of a veiled lady in a tattered, dirtied bridal dress, crying in the middle of the road. It’s not an official monster since I didn’t buy it off the [Monsters] tab, but it was meant to scare a driver off the road and cause an accident. However, it only had a one-time use per dawn, so I had to trigger it carefully. I didn’t bother purchasing the higher-end versions of the trap, where she could be projected as a vivid hallucination to the delvers, but it'll do the trick for what I had in mind.

“Can’t see shit,” John muttered.

I projected my consciousness inside the van again, where John wiped the fogging windshield with his jacket’s sleeve, and the heater was on full blast. Thick mist rolled in from the woods and enveloped the van.

“It’s foggy out there,” Art said, unsure. “Where’s it coming from?”

John tapped Leo’s arm. “Be careful. I don’t want to get into an accident. We just fixed the tire.”

Leo nodded. “I’m trying.”

“How long until we reach the cabin?” Scottie asked.

“It’s the opposite side of Cedar Pine, so…a mile? Maybe two more?”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Just get us there before Eddie does,” John said.

While I waited for them to arrive at the cabin, I opened up the prompt to review my [DUNGEONS] tab and then selected North Cedar Lake.

NORTH CEDAR LAKE

Dread Level: 4/10 - new dungeon(+); bloodthirsty core (++); massive domain(+)

Crystals: 755

Essence: 2

AURA & ENVIRONMENT (3/3)

Unnerving Fog

Strange Noises

Luring Trance

MONSTERS (4/5)

Name

Marker

Status

Possessing Demon

— Out of Bounds !!!! —

Active

The Goliath

Cellar

Active

Siren

Siren Nest

Active

Old Growth

Trail B

Active

LOCATIONS

Master Bedroom (Cabin)

2nd Bedroom (Cabin)

Living room (Cabin)

Kitchen (Cabin)

Bathroom (Cabin)

Cellar (Cabin)

Front Porch (Cabin)

Back Porch (Cabin)

Cellar Tunnel (Cabin)

Storage Shed

Generator Shed

North Cedar Lake

Boathouse/Docks

Siren Nest

Underwater Tunnel

Main Road

Trail A

Trail B

Trail C

Campground A

Hunter Shack

Newer tabs had cropped underneath the locations since my borders had expanded (and the change of scenery), including the new monsters I made while the demon went off to dig my body. I realized that the Dungeon Core adapted to whatever environment I designated as my dungeon. The Yates Residence was considerably smaller than I had now, the northern half of Cedar Lake and the surrounding McLaren Forest. Owning vast acres of land let me gain more influence, deliver more Dread, and extra monster slots (The Yates Residence only allowed two). I could have designated Green Hill as my dungeon, but that would be a bad idea in the long run.

The one thing humans were good at was destroying something they didn’t understand. Shoot first; ask questions later. And even if I made Green Hill a dungeon, hundreds of people living there would die. It’s hard to stay hidden when people keep dying in the wealthiest neighborhood in town from brutal circumstances.

The dungeon’s methods of extracting essence were…less than pleasant.

It was one of the reasons why the demon wanted to set my primary dungeon inside a cave; the area of possibilities I could create and excavate below ground was massive. I wouldn’t doubt if I could dig dozens of miles underground and even build cities if I’m powerful enough. However, Earth didn’t have thousands of dedicated adventurers who would gladly dive through these death traps to grab some loot and the coveted treasures. The demon and the system had hinted hundreds of worlds made delving like a typical nine-to-five job akin to being a doctor, lawyer, or office clerk.

Good for them, I thought. Only a tiny percentage of people on Earth wanted to explore a cave unless they were spelunkers. It would have made things easier if I lived in those worlds. I would know the rules on day one and gain plenty of essences the right way, but instead, I was left scrambling for dear life.

But it’s not so bad, either. If I got teleported there, I probably wouldn’t survive on my first day against a veteran delver and a band of adventurers. At least on Earth, humans were oblivious to my existence.

Speaking of treasures…

Was that my purpose now? Give freebies at the end of the tunnel? Drop loot like some video game?

I was still getting used to my new body, and thinking about treasures and loot was far away from my mind. I wanted all the cultists dead, and I am not giving them a fucking prize if they lasted long.

But tonight presented a convenient opportunity while these men were in my domain. Maybe I could learn a few things about my core while I—no—my monsters torture them.

Aside from including [Strange Noises] and [Luring Trance], I swapped the [Phantasmal Cold] for [Unnerving Fog] since they were almost the same thing. However, the fog was exclusively a regional effect, shrouding the land in heavy mist, which could disorient the delvers if they ventured into the woods. I couldn’t wait to increase their duration once (and if) I level up.

Unnerving Fog

The dungeon is covered by a swirling cloud of heavy mist, bringing chill winds. It can disorient and shed a delver’s resolve over time. Duration: 1 hour.

It did the trick. Leo slowed down as he navigated through the fog. Art grasped a pendant of the Virgin Mary from under his shirt’s collar, uttering a quiet prayer. Scottie and John ignored the bumpy ride even though John looked like he would be sick.

The road suddenly widened. Leo had more space to navigate as the forest retreated away from him. A few seconds later, he could make out a shape of a roof in the distance, and he then steered the van to the side, stopping right under an elm tree.

“So. This is it,” Leo said, studying the cabin curiously.

A neat thing about the environmental auras of a dungeon was that I could tweak them. So, I pulled the mist back a little so the four men could get a good view of the cabin’s shadowed facade. The porch swing out front swayed gently from a chill wind. If I were them, this was going to freak me out.

“Where’s the car?” Scottie asked.

“Huh?” John turned around.

“The car. If someone’s staying here, where’s their car? You don’t think Eddie got here first and called for help, do you?”

“Maybe we should leave. Maybe the cabin owner already drove out of here,” Art said worriedly.

Hm. Should I do something about this? Maybe I should. Sighing and harnessing [Telekinesis], I switched on the living room light. They couldn’t see much inside since the curtains were closed, and they parked fifty feet away from the front porch. Their heads swiveled in unison, anticipating a person to walk past. I counted to five and turned off the lights again.

[Power: 9/10]

“Uh, maybe someone is home after all,” John said. “We should go take a look. It might be Eddie inside.”

“I don’t know about this, John,” Art said. “This place is fucking creepy.”

“It’s a cabin in the woods. Of course, it’s fucking creepy, Gomez.” John opened the door and took out his gun. “But I’m not a pussy. Are you?”

Art clenched his teeth and said nothing, and followed Scottie out of the sliding van doors. Leo hesitated to get out of the van, but when he watched John, Scottie, and Art stalking closer to the cabin, he drew enough courage to step out. He fished out his phone and turned on the flash before studying the ground. He frowned. His hand went over to his hip, searching for something, an instinct of a soldier looking for a weapon. He found nothing there.

“Leo?” John whispered, crouching with the others and trying to blend in with the heavy mist. “What the hell are you doing?”

Leo crept beside him. “I don’t see any tire tracks,” he said. “If Eddie got here and the owners drove him back to town, they would have left tracks. As you can see, the ground is muddy. There isn’t even a faint track. I don’t think anyone’s been here for a while.”

“You think he’s still here then?”

“Or still swimming in the lake.”

John nodded. “Okay. Let’s spread out. Check the perimeter. Find a way inside.”

“What about the other people?” Scottie asked. “What are we gonna do?”

“I told you we should have brought more guns,” Leo said.

“Hey, I didn’t think this was gonna happen. It’s supposed to be an easy job.”

“There’s no point complaining about it,” Art said. “I’ll go around back.”

“Scottie, why don’t you stay in the van?” John said.

“Me? Why?”

“If things get out of hand, I need someone behind the wheel ready.”

Scottie didn’t like it, but John gave him a look that he would not argue out here while Eddie and an unknown number of people were inside the cabin.

“Wait.” Leo crept back to the van and slowly opened the door. He grabbed the duffel bag, took out a few things, and went back to the others. “Here.” He handed Art a knife and a crowbar while he held onto the mallet and another knife. He gave Scottie a knife as well. “Better to have weapons.”

John grabbed the mallet off Leo’s hand and handed him the Glock. “You should get this. You’re a better shot than me.”

Leo nodded. “Sounds good.”

“Alright. Scottie, get back inside the van. The rest of you, let’s move.”

Scottie grumbled back behind the wheel and huffed. “I can fucking handle myself, thank you very much.” He put the weapon down on the passenger seat.

Scottie watched the others disappear into the fog and out of his sight. Outside the driver’s side window, The Goliath stood two feet behind him, looming through the glass.