Dakota Krout - Dungeon Born (The Divine Dungeon Book 1)

These ones had health potions though, which was surprising given that most of the people who take serious injuries here die. Someone was making a fortune on people who would never get a chance to drink the potions. Hmm. Really that is a good point... Was I getting too dangerous? Almost everyone who got hurt died nowadays... I felt that this was a good way to get overpowered people in here fast. I needed to start throwing the lower level guys a handout, or they would stop coming. How best to do this? I turned to my best source of ideas: Dani.

I was proud that I was using this word for the first time, it was fun to ‘say’. Freebies. Ha!

“What about the iron mining? That seems to calm them down a bit.” She querulously put forward. It was a literal sore spot, the chipping away of iron constantly gave me the equivalent of a headache.

I offered a few concepts floating around in my mind.

She considered for a moment, “Not a bad idea, but then the apothecary up there will go out of business, leave, and there will be at least one less person you get a chance to eat. Oh, how about adding some gemstones to the iron every once in a while?”

I ventured a solution,

“That sounds good.” She pondered thoughtfully. “Might even get a few people to willingly drink poison.”

“Diabolic! That is a spectacular idea!” She was so excited that she was merrily glowing, and neither of us saw the look of greed cross the face of the man stealthily watching from above. No one in the area had seen her before now.

“You know it, Cal!” Dani joyously bubbled. She returned to invisibility, getting ready for the show. A five-man group hesitantly walked in, surprising me with their low levels. Only one was out of the F-ranking, and he was a low D-rank. For the first group to get here, outside of Dale's, to be so low ranked astonished me. Well, free food and all that I supposed. Beggars and choosers and whatnot. I took direct control of Raile, wasting no time charging at them as quietly as possible.

“There it is!” A panicking voice shrieked.

“Why is it so big ?” yelled another. “It didn’t look nearly this big from above!”

“Just get ready!”

Another yell from above alerted me that people had noticed a fight starting and were scrambling to make bets. Cheering filtering down gave the group determination as they dived to get out of the way of my charging Boss. One dived a second too late and Raile’s armored paw, as large as a small bear’s, crushed the bones between himself and the floor, grinding the now shattered leg into the granite floor. The man’s scream resounded in the enclosed space, and the cheering abruptly cut off. They must have realized they were about to see someone die, a first for the Boss room. The show became a whole new event, as people prepared themselves to witness death firsthand.

The other group members sprang to their fallen friends’ aid, valiantly and pointlessly charging. I ignored the downed man, he had no ranged weapons that I could see. His screams would do more damage to the group than his death would. Making directly for the rest of the group, Raile sprang upward, and came to the earth with a thunderous clap of stone striking flesh. One of the men had shoved the other out of the way, taking the entire weight of Raile’s body himself and dying silently. Raile nearly slipped as he regained his footing, blood and gore oozing from the underside of his armor, as he turned to attack again.

The furious men now got as close as they could, beating on Raile with flanged maces and armor-shattering Warhammers. They had certainly brought the correct tools for fighting Raile; even so, the damage they did was surprising, especially for such a small, weak group. I thought for a moment, realizing they were attacking in fury, their pulped friend driving them to become enraged. As Raile moved to jump again, a lucky swing from a Warhammer hit the joint of his knee just before he pounced. The jump interrupted, Raile flopped down, knee cap broken. Still dangerous, but far less limber, he squealed and ran at another man, clipping him with his charge.

* Oof !* was all I heard over the crash of armor and the wet tearing of skin as bone became visible from the inside of my victim's chest. He spun mostly out of the way of the attack, falling to his knees as he wheezed for breath with broken ribs.

Another mace crashed down taking out the mobility of my/Raile’s back legs this time. Raile pulled himself along as the teammates, those able to do so, cheered. Cockily, one walked around to the front of a very slow moving Raile, and raised his mace to start trying to break through his armor. After a few hard hits, Raile flopped down, stunned, as the granite chipped and cracked. The attack broke off for a moment as the man caught his breath. He wiped his brow, smiling and laughing, obscuring his vision just long enough for a golden streak to reach Raile and * boop * him on the nose.

A scream too high pitched for the humans to hear went through Raile as his legs twisted, mending his bones. His head stopped ringing, his torn muscles healed, and he leapt at the man in front of him, bearing him to the ground. There was not much power to the attack, as he had not had time to build momentum, but that mattered little as the man’s body caved in under Raile. The man weakly tried to strike him, failing as a rush of Essence flowing to me signaled the man had been killed. Triumphant, I turned Raile’s head to look for more adversaries as the pointed end of a Warhammer smashed down onto the cracked armor on Raile’s head, crushing through it and into his brain.

I shrieked silently. Luckily, the mind-speak that I used wasn’t audible, else I’d have given myself away.

Dani silently comforted me as the men rolled Raile away from their fallen comrade. Very respectfully, the ambulatory members lay him against the wall and moved to collect their other fallen comrade. They walked to where he had been obliterated, but I had finished absorbing him by then. They looked confused, then horrified as they turned to rush back to the man they had placed by the wall.

I silently burped.

The men were entirely destroyed as a group. The ones not openly weeping were staring stony faced at the somber spectators above them. Their audience had a few intermixed who were swapping silver, and the adventurers below quickly grew furious.

“They made this fight look so easy! Not once were they seriously hurt!” One was raging. “I’m gonna make sure everyone knows this fight is ridiculous! No one will ever bother coming down here again!”

I thought. Time to distribute some loot. I figured since these guys were low ranked, it would be fair to give them a way bigger reward than Dale’s group earned. I bet that would stop the cries of anger!

A rain of items fell around Raile, catching the men off guard and making them startle badly. Heh. Gotta have fun somehow, right? I dropped a massive Warhammer with an Inscription at each end, both powered by Essence they would have to provide at the hilt. The Rune near the hilt allowed the hammer to be near weightless, while the one at the top made the force of the swing be multiplied many times over. If they could use that in a fight correctly, it could shatter Raile’s armor like glass. In a sneaky move, I had also placed the ‘binding’ site directly under the activation, whoever used it would be the only one who could, until that owner died at least.

I dropped one boot, which had a perfect liquid repulsion Rune, which I bet would become very popular when people found out about the acid trap. The Rune was large enough to have an area of effect that surrounded the person wearing it, they could jump in a lake without getting damp. On a whim, I also gave them a Sword with the sharpening augmentation. Inside of it I placed a low powered Beast Core that would be able to hold a charge from the activator, allowing them to use it freely in combat if they charged it beforehand.