Chương 7: A New Challenger Approaches

Darkness. I curled up on the cold stone floor, head ringing. I clutched my stomach. If I had been hungry earlier, it was nothing compared to the ravenous hunger that coursed through me. Hours. Minutes. Days. Seconds. How long had I been here? Whatever had happened to me, I was alive. Somehow. The footsteps of countless tiny feet skittered around me, rummaging about. I dared not open my eyes. This nightmare would pass soon enough. The goblins would find and rescue me, eventually. Hopefully.

Something wet and warm wrapped around my toes, sending a chill running up my spine. I gasped, and opened my eyes for the first time, the effort almost herculean. Two tiny, beady eyes met my own, reflecting off the faint blue flame of a dying torch on the wall. A giant rat—as big as a medium-sized dog. It squeaked. I screamed. It flashed its two long front teeth at me, and bit down on my ankle.

"Ah! What the fuck!" I kicked, sending it sliding across the floor. It screamed even louder and bared its teeth, sprinting back toward me. My sword emitted its dull-red glow on the other side of the room. I cursed. Out of reach. I stuck to what worked and kicked the rat again before scrambling to my feet and racing towards the blade. From the opposite doorway, two new rats rushed forward, hissing and snapping at me as I reached for the sword.

I backed away, and one bit down on the blade, carrying it out of the room and into the unknown.

"Wait, that's mine!" I shouted. But three more appeared behind it, their heads high enough to be level with my knees. They hissed, and charged. All I could do was cower and watch the glowing blade disappear. I stumbled to the back of the room, grabbing the blue-flamed torch affixed to the wall. The sconce snapped away from the crumbling brick as I tugged, freeing the torch with a snap. I swept blue flame outward, illuminating the rat's matted fur and yellow teeth as they screeched.

They circled me as I inched ever backward, until my back was pressed against the wall. To my side, an open doorway led to a stairway heading downward. I gulped, realizing where I was. Or rather, realizing where I wasn't. The temple was gone—the dungeon core absent. My disorientation fled away from me, my memories sharpening. This was a small, boxed-in, stone-walled room. Whatever I had done, I was now in the dungeon proper.

A rat lunged at me, and I hammered the torch onto it, knocking it to the floor with a wet squelch. Without missing a beat, I waved the torch at the rest of them, and they screeched, skittering off and out of the room. I collapsed onto the floor, panting. The rat wheezed next to me, a pool of blood forming around it. I set the torch down, the blue flame flickering upwards, lacking any heat that I would expect from a fire—doing nothing to prevent the icy chill of the dungeon.

I placed a hand on the rat, trying to think of some other way to put it out of its misery. I could hit it again with the torch, but… My sole ability came to mind. [Harvest]: Draw a soul into your core. I took a deep breath, and closed my eyes. The only time I had activated this before was by accident when I was leaving the cave with Stick. Doing it intentionally was a whole other ball game. Deep inside me, there was a knowledge of how it worked.

It was similar to breathing or blinking; I could tell I knew how to do it, but currently lacked the muscle control—like grabbing a glass of water after a heavy forearm workout. I framed the ability in my mind, feeling the twisting threads of power wrap and writhe inside me. Just out of reach. The word came to my mouth without me thinking, as if speaking it would make it solid.

"Harvest." The threads of power snapped to attention, flooding through the center of my body and making their way up into my fingertips. From the tip of my index finger, a black blob of energy reached out to the dying rat, connecting with its matted fur, and activating. Energy flooded through me. Both cold and bitter, it rode up the black blob of energy and into some previously unknown channels in my body, settling into my core itself.

[Minor Soul Harvested] It was as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on me. I shook with full-body chills, and my teeth clattered together. I half expected an icy breath to leave my mouth when I exhaled. The rat was still. A tear rolled down my cheek. Even if the rat had been a terrifying monster, it was a life I had ended intentionally. Hell, I even cried when my fish died at work. I guess this was something I needed to get used to.

Safe for now, I reached deep into myself to interrogate what had happened to me. Everything from before existed only as flashes of light and brief impressions. Attuning the dungeon core… the rage that followed. There had been an eruption of power, followed by the shattering of… something. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Had I destroyed the dungeon core? The presence that formed when I attuned with the dungeon still lingered in the back of my head.

Before, the presence was all-encompassing. Now, it barely flickered, almost entirely invisible. I prodded at it, hoping that the voice from before wouldn't return. Instead, text appeared over my vision. [Dungeon of the Carrion King] [Level 1] [Dungeon Essense: 0/1] I blinked.

"Level 1?" I said. What the hell happened? Perhaps this should have been a cause for celebration. A victory over the thing that tried to dominate me and bend me to its will. But instead I felt sorrow—regret—in the same way that I felt when I killed the rat. I took something whole and destroyed it. I tugged at the presence one last time, trying to see if I could get any reaction out of it.

"Hello? Are you there?" The response came in a hum. […] The skittering footsteps of the rats continued ahead, squeaking and chittering amongst themselves. They still had my sword, and I still needed to get the hell out of here. A gust of cold air burst from the stairway down, flickering the blue flames of my torch.

"Fuck that," I said. I didn't know where the hell I was in this dungeon, but I knew one universal truth: the way out was up. The presence hummed again, jostling me. […]"If you're still in there, you need to speak up. I don't understand what you're trying to tell me." Silence. Onwards, then.

The rats must have learned their lesson, for the next room was deathly quiet, still. I swept the torch in a wide arc in front of me, burning away any rogue cobwebs that hung from the ceiling. One thing was clear: I was in a crypt of some kind. Flimsy wooden coffins lined either wall, indecipherable inscriptions strewn about their open lids. The coffins were empty, at least. How much further did this place go? I slunk into the next room, groaning as the torch revealed not one exit, but three.

Stone columns, unembellished except for a rough ridge, rose from floor to ceiling in each corner of the room, the ground otherwise made of compacted hard dirt. Tiny paws made imprints in the ground, going off in all three directions. Wherever my sword went, the rats did a good job of obscuring its trail. I was half-tempted to just leave the place without it. But then what? Let the goblins have it instead? I ground my teeth and went left. […]"Again, going to need more from you if you want me to understand you."

The next room was a continuation of the catacombs. Dead torches hung from either side of the entrance, and I raised my torch up to them out of curiosity. They seemed to steal the flame from the one I was holding, lighting ablaze with their own blue fire, but at half the height as my own. Scattered bones spread out across the floor. Cubbies lined the walls, empty except for random assortments of bones. I inched forward, and something on the other side of the room rattled.

"What the hell?" A femur dragged itself across the floor, tumbling end over end, followed by a handful of knucklebones. A ribcage came next, and then a fully attached hand, crawling forward on its fingers. All gathered toward a single skull, whose eyes burned with the same blue fire as my torch. One by one the bones collected next to the skull, knitting together to form a headless human skeleton. It bent over to pick up the blue-flamed skull and set it atop its shoulders.

Snapping its jaw, it raised a fist and ran after me. I had somehow entered a universe where a swarm of ravenous, giant rats were far more terrifying than an actual skeleton. I sidestepped the creature, sticking a leg out to trip it. The skeleton fell to the ground, bones clattering apart.

"We don't need to fight!" I yelled.

"I claimed this dungeon! Aren't you supposed to listen to me now?" The bones knitted back together, reforming with perfect precision, and continued its charge. I swung the torch like a bat, knocking the skull off its shoulders and sending it flying into a wall, where it cracked with a satisfying snap. The headless skeleton raised a fist and cracked me in the jaw. I stumbled backward, landing on my ass. Had I ever been punched before? Stars covered my vision, and my torch clattered away from me.

I blinked, trying to clear my head as the skeleton stumbled around, trying to find its head. It picked around aimlessly, bumped into a wall, and grabbed a different skull that it placed upon its shoulders. The skull promptly fell off, clattering onto the dusty ground below. I scrambled forward, grabbing the cracked, blue-flame skull for myself. One eye dimmed, a series of cracks extending out from the eye socket. The skeleton found its sense of direction as I held the skull, and came sprinting towards me.

I reached inward for my harvest ability, trying to connect all the various threads to— The skeleton kicked me in the chest, but I held on to the skull in a death grip. It reared back for another kick, and I shouted, "Harvest!" The words clicked everything into place, and the blue light behind the skull faded as power flooded into me. The skeleton collapsed into a pile of lifeless bones, inches from my feet. [Common Soul Harvested] Where the rat's soul filled my core like water in a bucket, this soul felt far more…

substantial. When the chill faded, yet another unfamiliar presence swam inside me, deep inside my core. I reached inward, trying to make sense of the presence. If I was still living in my previous life, I would grab a whiteboard and a dry erase marker to try to figure this out. But since that world was gone to me now, I had to rely on my imagination. I closed my eyes and pictured the presence inside me. In the darkness of my mind, two blobs of energy floated about.

I poked and prodded at each of them, but they fled from my mental touch. But they were tangible. Solid. They swam around in the darkness like— A grin spread up to my cheeks. Like fish in a fish tank. The smaller one, the soul of the rat, glowed in vibrant colors like my old guppy. The bigger one could almost be a goldfish. All at once, the images in my mind's eye took on a life of their own. One moment there was blackness, the next, I was staring at a four-walled, ten-gallon fish tank.

No longer just abstract colors, the rat's soul actually was a tiny, colorful guppy. The skeletons appeared as stark, wide-eyed goldfish, blowing bubbles and swimming around its enclosure. But what now? As far as I knew, I only had one ability—Harvest. What else could I do with these souls? If I was to be a Necromancer, I would have to figure that part out sooner or later. I reached inward, visualizing a mental net to scoop out the soul-guppy.

It swam desperately away from me, but after a few swiping attempts, I cornered it. I pulled it from my mental image of the tank, and its power—no matter how small—flared. It was as if I could channel that same energy into myself— Something inside me activated, and the rat's soul popped out of existence with a pained squeak. My vision sharpened and my muscles relaxed. It was as if I had just taken a quick power nap.

[You have consumed a soul, drawing out its raw lifeforce to empower yourself, destroying the soul in the process.] [Ability Manifested] [Consume - Consume a collected soul to empower yourself. Destroys soul in the process.]"Nooooo!" I shouted.