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

They scattered in time, blast it, but were now isolated and off balance. Raile nudged Hans as he charged Josh, sending the first spinning and catching a barely prepared Josh’s shield. The Rune worked overtime, small chunks of Raile’s armor crumbled into powder and cracked. My curiosity was satisfied as Josh still went flying. During the distraction provided by the flying man, Raile charged the weak link, Dale.

“Come on you overgrown rabbit! I’ve been practicing!” Dale turned and ran.

Dani softly chuckled into my head, “Maybe he’s been practicing his cardio?”

“His running ability.” She uttered something condescending under her breath about my lack of vocabulary.

I watched proudly as Dale reached the wall just before Raile did. Raile pounced at him from a charge, ready to do maximum damage as Dale dropped to his back and slid into the wall, pushing off at an odd angle to maintain momentum. Raile smashed into the wall full speed, stunning himself and dropping to the ground where Dale no longer was, pushing off the wall had moved him just enough.

I grunted as the groups blunt weapons broke through the armor over Raile’s head and killed him.

“I think you are starting to like him. You’ve always liked a challenge.” Dani laughed at my long-suffering moan.

I dropped a pair of boots for each of them, they cheered until they saw they were all left-footed. Heh. I dropped a pickaxe and a right-footed armored boot with the same force enhancing Rune as the Warhammer I had dropped yesterday, and a dagger with the inverted form of the Rune that had been on the ‘Demonologist’ dagger Dale had killed Raile with. I had studied it; turned out that the original dagger would pull the Essence out of its victims until it had enough to summon a powerful demon under the wielder's control.

The effect of the dagger they had now... I was unsure of. Maybe it would summon an angel? I’m sure I would find out eventually. After brief discussion, they agreed to sell the pickaxe and share the profits, though they cast lots for the inscribed boot. I’m fairly certain Hans cheated, while Dale fairly won the dagger but decided to get it checked by a Spotter before he decided to use it or sell it. Hans had no such compunctions, putting on his ill-gained boot and strutting around in mismatched footwear. With a look of glee on his face, he jumped and stomped down, activating the Rune.

* WHAM * A shockwave knocked Hans to the shattered floor, laughing all the while.

“Woo! Look at that! Left a footprint an inch deep in solid granite! I have so many plans for this!” Hans whooped as he prepared to stomp again.

“Maybe you do that in an open area next time?” Steve called sourly, holding ringing ears and wiping rock dust off himself. The others nodded their assent.

“What?” Hans replied, pawing at his ears.

“Exactly.” Steve loudly stated. “Let’s go, I still want to see a healer for my back. And my ears now. Then lunch, I’m starving .”

They climbed the staircase, allowing not very bright people to again push past them at the top. The newcomers had decided to ignore the warnings, it seemed. Yum. There was no other group close to the second floor Boss room, though the first Boss room had been cleared while I wasn’t focused it seems. I fixed my floor, really, smashing up my floor wasn’t the way to entice me to give good items again.

really full of Essence. Let me know if anyone comes in.> I nearly whispered, my mind going over the patterns and layouts that had originally seemed to be a simple hand wrapping.

“What? Oh, fine. I’ll let you know if anyone makes it in here.” Dani grumbled. “Now I’m a watchdog.”

Meanwhile, I was astounded. These were definitely Runes, but they were so strong! Only one of them I felt confident I could use without destroying something, and none of these were Runes I would give out for defeating the relatively weak Mobs in my dungeon. This is coming from me, the one who happily gave out an enchantment on a hammer that could be used to blast open a mountain pass.

I focused in on the one Rune I would feel safe using, it looked exactly like a smaller version of the fractal of energy surrounding my Chi spiral. I compared the two in my mind, the Inscription had a slightly different curve in a few places that was odd to me, as it forced the pattern to be non-symmetrical. Was this a Rune for absorbing Essence?

I had to find out. In a dead end room on my second floor as far away from my Core as possible was where I experimented with unknown Runes. I lovingly thought of it as the ‘horrible failure with a few successes room’. Long name, amazing results. Over time, if I had been unable to repair the stone in here there would only be a smoking, simmering room full of molten rock and odd noises. It seems that poorly made Runes tended to explode. Who knew, right? That was one of the... nicer effects.

The Runes that I used corruption with that also turned out to be badly made Runes, had more… interesting effects. An air Rune I had drawn on a rock allowed it to scream, which it did constantly . Luckily, a Rune exploding underneath it had interrupted the flow of energy to the screaming rock, making it go silent again. Of course, now I wondered if rocks were alive. Dani told me I was being ridiculous, but… Screaming rocks didn’t seem to worry her much. As a rock-like being I felt for the poor little guy.

A multi-Essence Rune that I tried to make had convinced me not to try combining corruption again until I knew what I was doing. It had created a rift, which used all of the Essence so fast that I was angry at first. The rift snapped shut after only the blink of an eye, but the rotten, clawed hand that had made it through in that timespan was a testament to the continuation of working freaking carefully . Definitely had opened a rift into the abyss there, I really didn’t want to be responsible for allowing unbound demons onto our plane of existence. It did teach me to give the Runes very little power when I first activated them, at least until I was sure of their capabilities.

I digress, I wanted to see if this new Rune was used to accumulate Essence. I very carefully recreated the Rune to the molecular level, double and triple checking it to ensure that it was exactly the same as the one I had taken from Craig. I prepared myself to activate it, but was interrupted when Dani informed me that people had entered the Boss room.

I dazedly looked at Dani.

“You were focused for about three hours; this is the sixth group that has come down to the second level. All the other ones got injured or turned around for some other reason.” Reported General Dani.

I tried to match an accent I had heard,

“Why did I have to be bonded with a weirdo?” Dani muttered.

“Quiet down, here they come.”

me if I don’t want them to.> I bragged. my fault you have to make sounds to be heard.>

A head poked around the corner of the tunnel, “Hey! We made it!”

“Told you we would! Quiet down now, I want to have surprise on our side.” a deep voice admonished.

Fat chance of that happening.

“You have the net? Remember not to kill the Boss too fast.” Oh boy, this group was cocky. I would soon show them the error of their ways.

“It’s always wandering around, so group up and make sure to stay light on your feet. We know that one group in the morning plays up how hard it is to kill that beast. If that F-ranked group made it, we should have no trouble. Watch out for the giant bunny boys, it might still actually be able to do some real damage.” Mr. Deep voice sneeringly preached. “Get ready… Go, go, go!”