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

“All the wonders of the Capitol, and you are most excited about the… Sewers. Nothing else caught your attention?” Steve interrogated him levelly. “You need to go places without Hans. His politics will ruin your day.”

“We had fun! We did other things too! He brought me to a pleasure house.” Dale chattered indignantly.

“He did what ?!” Craig gasped, turning and glaring at the man.

“Not like that-” Hans tried to explain, glares directed at him.

Dale continued talking over them, “I met a Madame, she gave us a discount because we went to her together, and she thinks her granddaughter would like to come train here.”

“Hans, you disgusting pervert.” Josh coldly stated, “How could you do that to the lad? You went together? At the same time ? With a grandmother? ”

“Well, how else do you do it? Who wants to do that alone?” Dale sounded a bit exasperated at the questions.

Hans was literally on the floor crying with laughter as he tried to hold up his hands in surrender. “N-n-n-no, guys! Guys! Hahaha! W-we went to the Pleasure House! The one Madame owns! He, he doesn’t know what this sounds like! The restaurant!” He could say nothing else as he gasped for air around his laughter.

The others started chuckling, then laughing almost as hard as Hans. The look of confusion on Dale’s face made them laugh even harder.

“What? What’s going on?!” Dale demanded, “I’ve never been off these mountains, come on! What's the joke?!”

They regained their feet and started walking, ignoring his angry questions and laughing as they went further in; some patting their naive companion on the back and shoulders as they walked. Working quickly, they cleared several rooms, constantly making their way toward the Boss room. A splashing sound garnered their interest, but before they were able to discern the location of the bubbling liquid, the new Boss squad was attacking them.

I informed Dani.

“Oh yeah? Added some traps or something?” Dani managed to tear her gaze away from the impending battle.

The Boss squad was in full attack mode, but the Impaler ran straight at the wall - which opened enough to allow him into a small tunnel that ran along the room. It had loops in it that would grant a full speed sprint into the main room, hopefully taking people by surprise from an unexpected direction.

One of the two small rock-covered Smashers went directly for Josh, who braced himself with a grin and held out his shiny new tower shield. At the last moment he thrust it forward! * Clang * * sn-nap * The Smashers neck broke with an organic tearing sound, his spine protruding from just below the base of his skull.

“Yes! It’s so much better than my last one!” Josh roared in celebration.

I worriedly queried Dani.

She answered pensively, “It returns part of the momentum of the attack back on the attacker, doesn’t it? That heavy charge had a lot of power in it I think.”

The infernally enhanced Impaler chose that moment to erupt from a tunnel opening behind Steve just then, landing a successful sneak attack. His sharpened horn burst through the thick leather armor just below Steve’s kidney, the angle of the horn opening his spleen as it punched through his front. A pained gasp is all the sound the man could muster as he fell to his knees.

The Impaler lived up to his name well, setting its paws on Steve's back it pushed backward, adding more damage to the ravaged body it was standing on. Not yet out of the fight, Steve whipped around and crushed the skull of the offending Impaler with his bare hands. He then pulled the last bit of horn from his body with a soft grunt before casually sitting down. Dale shot forward and caught an Oppressor with a swing, snapping its spine. Craig moved in a blur of motion, killing the two remaining Mobs as Hans ran to help Steve.

“You’re gonna be alright, don’t you worry ‘bout a thing.” Hans held his hands against the gushing wound. “We’re ten minutes from the most powerful healer you’ll ever need.” He scooped Steve up easily, keeping pressure on the wound with his arm as he lifted from the ground.

“Well I didn’t open all those meridians so I could dance.” Steve sputtered blood mid-sentence. “I’ll be fine! I’ve had worse when I was caught with that noble girl, remember?” He gurgled a bloody chuckle.

“Well that's for the best, because I have to tell ya, you got two left feet.” Hans quipped, starting for the exit. “Plus you are too good for a backwater noble family anyway.”

Dale caught their attention, “Wait! Look! This is pouring out a health potion!”

I focused on Dani for a second,

“No,” she crushed my hopes, “We wanted to get people used to the idea of a healing fountain in here.”

Dale pulled out a flask and dunked it into the churning cistern, which had a fountain flowing into it. I had decided on that design, I wanted both function and form. I’m a sucker for pampering myself. Dale moved over to his friend who was bleeding out, helping him drink as much as he could.

Craig then instructed Dale to pour the potion directly onto the wound, then they watched anxiously as it swiftly closed. The hanging scraps of meat pulled together into working tissue, the blood vessels flowed back together, and the ruined nerves returned to a working system.

The potion was high quality, as was everything I gave out. The potion did more than the eye could see, stimulating bone marrow to produce blood cells and fluids, mimicking proteins for growth, but still a scar would remain. The healing process took a lot of energy, usually provided by the person doing the healing. Since a potion didn’t bring in much extra energy, I was certain Steve would be very hungry soon, he would have to eat to replenish his system. Hopefully he would starve soon enough that he would become distracted - and I could eat him .

Crisis averted, they sat to cultivate as Dani informed me that the first of the gems had been found, so I took a look. Yup, people were going nuts over the small chunks of emeralds they found. I would keep it interesting, there was also Ruby, Lapis, and - really rarely - Diamonds! Each of these were in a little hollow between layers of iron and stone that people would naturally come upon while mining, if they worked hard enough. In these hollows, there was also....

“Augh! It’s a- * Gack *” The mining man’s voice cut off as an uncovered Bane fired a poisonous thorn into his shouting mouth, the lucky shot going through the roof of his mouth into his brain.

I just got my first pickaxe! I had really been wanting one of these! A rush of Essence made its way to me, filling me with a sense of well-being. A thought occurred to me then, maybe I hadn’t had it before because I was a lower ranking, but at D-rank three… Perhaps I was more empathetic?

I felt oddly detached, The thought of even passive Necromancy like that was disturbing to me.

“What? No!” Dani was shocked, making me feel instant gratitude that she understood my concern. “Souls are terrifyingly powerful, especially when freshly dead. When a being dies they release a burst of energy, which separates their bodies and souls. That is the rush of Essence you get access to.”

I realized she may just be trying to calm me.

“Honestly, I have no idea. It must have been a specially prepared stone made by someone so powerful I cannot even comprehend it. It would need to be an S-ranked Necromancer, at least. I have never heard of a Necromancer becoming that powerful though.” Dani mused. “They are always killed. Well…”