Chapter 7: Purpose

Date and Time Unknown

Dungeon Ciara

The shadowy, yellow-eyed beast slinked silently down into my Dungeon. With pointy ears, a long tail, and a lean muscular body striped with patchy gray and black fur, the intruder moved purposefully on padded feet, scanning everything as it went.

A few flies hiding against the ceiling and walls of the entrance tunnel took off and fled from my Dungeon at its approach.

Long, sensitive whiskers twitched as the creature stopped to sniff the air before licking its long-toothed chops with a rasp-covered tongue.

Curiosity turned to excitement over what had come to call as I recognized it and silently exclaimed,

Kitty!

The cat drew closer to my trap. Deep hunger in my core warred with the feline’s fluffy cuteness, and I agonized over what to do. On the one hand, I needed to feed. But…

But why in the hell does it have to be a cat? Why so soon, while I’m literally starving? How could I ever eat a kitty? I know it’s edible. It’s technically food. Adorable, delicious food! Who or whatever turned me into a Dungeon Core is going to answer for this if I end up committing catticide!

The hollow feeling screamed and churned, gnawing at my insides and urging me to consume the animal—the invader that had presented itself as tribute.

As the cat neared the spike trap, I died a little bit inside and prepared to suffer through untold guilt as my Dungeon instincts somehow cracked my will, pushing reason and compassion aside.

I don’t believe this… I’m… a lost cause. A failed Zoologist! What kind of moral person would even consider what I’m about to do? Does my past life’s humanity truly mean nothing at all?

If I had my human body from before the change, I’d have thrown my wretched new self onto my spike trap to sate the infernal hunger in the kitty’s stead.

I would rather starve than do something like this! So why can’t I stop what’s about to happen? My conscience writhed and kicked and screamed. All to no avail.

The hunger inside me would not be denied, no matter the cost. Survival was everything.

Is this how addicts feel? To know you shouldn’t—that you mustn’t do something, but you do it anyway? How can anyone live like this? It’s horrible. Someone take me away from here!

[Help, Sven! I’m about to commit murder, and I’ll never recover if I do! SVEN!]

There was no reply.

The cat padded silently and inexorably forward toward certain doom…

One meter to go.

Half a meter.

Ten centimeters…

I tensed up and began to tingle inside with anticipation and self-loathing as I prepared for an influx of mana. I cringed and crooned as I wondered and dreaded how it would taste and feel.

Something clinked softly and I caught the flash of a dull sheen in the dim light from my core.

Curious and desperate for a way out, I focused on the object.

A metallic disk hung from the cat’s neck as she paused to consider the trap area and its holes.

I looked closer.

The tarnished, copper-colored metal was etched with letters and I recognized them.

Nino

It was a name I recognized.

Nino-kitty! Does Tsubasa-san know you’re all the way out here?

I mentally exclaimed, I was about to murder my neighbor’s cat? You’ve gotta be kidding me! Am I living in my own personal hell?

Frustrated to the very depths of my core by the whole situation, I resisted slaying little Nino with my trap as she continued stealthily downward, then sniffed her way into the core room.

Oh, my God… I did it! I’m still human. Sort of.

If I still had my former body at that moment, I’d have been a poster child for ugly crying.

Like a furry, mouse-seeking missile, Nino stopped directly in front of Turd’s cozy little refuge and readied herself, becoming the adorable little cat-loaf I’d loved since she was a tiny kitten.

Turd poked his nose out to see what was going on and paid instantly for his curiosity. With a lightning-quick swipe of her right paw, Nino caught Turd with her claws. She hauled his frantically squeaking body out and chomped down with her sharp canine teeth. I heard his tiny bones crunching as the pressure of her bite silenced his cries.

A few seconds later, The Voice graced me with its suave, low-frequency candor while I stared numbly at Turd’s empty nest, dreading the impending feeling of loss.

<Turd has been slain. 1 hour until respawn.>

When that message came in, I recognized The Voice at last.

No way! It sounds almost exactly like Morgan Freeman, if he had a deeper voice! I mused. I would have smiled about it if I had a face. Freeman had long been one of my favorite actors, and it amused me that “he” had truly become something akin to The Voice of ‘God.’

The scientist in me found it amusing as well.

I just don’t believe in anything of that sort.

Gods and Dragons and… Dungeons…

Right?

Fuck.

As my jovial moment of recognition faded and my thoughts returned to what had just happened, I stared at Nino and silently admonished her, hoping she might hear.

[You’re a little savage, you know that, Nino? Turd was my friend!]

I immediately pondered the logic of speaking thus about a feline who was merely doing what comes naturally to her.

[Okay, fine. I barely knew the mouse by comparison with you, but still. Not cool!]

I felt a slight pang of indignation over the loss of Turd, but of course, I could never harm sweet old Tsubasa’s dear Nino, who had practically been my Nino as well, if you considered how often she entered my condo through the pet door.

Nino accelerated so quickly that I didn’t even notice she’d moved until she was almost outside.

Beneath the dim light of a crescent moon, I bore witness to the disappearing ghost of a pink butthole that I knew all too well as Nino accelerated across the sand.

[Brat!]

Still annoyed over the death of my mouse, I focused on the notification.

Turd would revive soon, so it wasn’t really a problem. But what was that cat thinking? She killed my only resident! Doesn’t she know that Dungeons are deadly?

A rush of excitement tainted with hunger flowed through me, eliciting savage thoughts.

I could effortlessly trigger those spikes, skewering the delicious little fur ball into tabby swiss-cheese, the next time she—

Wait! Whoa, there. That isn’t who I am at all. Nino is practically my cat, for pity’s sake. I mean, given what’s happened to Santa Cruz, I think she is my cat!

I’d never had such horrible thoughts or urges before.

What the hell is wrong with Dungeons? Haven’t any of them kept cats or dogs as—OH, GOD. MY GIRLS…

I fell into despair, my mind weeping as I remembered my sweet baby pups, Sunny and Sandy, whom I’d left behind.

Wait!

A glimmer of hope shone through as I recalled the events before my death.

My thoughts raced.

Nino survived! She was in the basement with my girls! That means…

I immediately focused my acute, 360-degree awareness above ground, searching with hawklike intensity for anything at all resembling a dog.

Preferably two dogs.

But after an hour spent looking, I had seen only the dimly-moonlit ruins of my neighborhood and the ocean.

As I brooded over my situation and fog started rolling in, a slight ripple tugged at my awareness when Turd respawned with a tiny blue flash inside his home.

Turd stood trembling in place for a moment, irritably twitching his tiny whiskers. Standing tall on his hind legs, he glanced around and nervously sniffed at the air.

Then he huffed what I took as a miniature sigh of relief, padded about in a circle on his bedding, and settled down to sleep again.

A sizable crane fly fluttered in through the morning fog and alighted to dangle from the stone inside my entrance, tapping its hind legs around until it found secure footholds. I mulled sending Turd to collect it, but I figured it was best to let him sleep after his harrowing ordeal.

Instead, I looked above again, clinging to the thinning hope that my sweet girls might come running home to greet the mother who worried so terribly for their safety.

The sand on the beach was crusted over wherever the surf hadn’t disturbed it. I frowned inwardly at that sight, recalling the impossible heat that vaporized my body and melted the sand.

For the first time, knowing at the very least that Nino had survived, I felt grateful that the basement below my childhood home—that I’d converted into a condo—had been designed by my crazy late father as a bomb shelter just after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The long descent that old Tsubasa joked “led halfway to the center of the Earth” through an absurdly thick concrete plug, used to mildly infuriate me at times.

Reaching the basement required almost two minutes walking down four staircases separated by three long hallways with heavy steel doors at either end.

Having served as a Naval Mechanic, my father never did anything halfway.

The cavernous space anchored to bedrock at the bottom held a laundry room, a functional kitchen, a full bathroom, two bedrooms, a massive store-room, and a living area which I used as a dedicated pet space.

An only child, I inherited the property after my parents died of COVID-19 while on a cruise. Their ship had been quarantined in port just one month after the pandemic began.

I’ve experienced more than enough death in the past few years!

Damn whoever sent that nuclear attack! They better not have harmed my babies.

That thought flooded my mind with molten rage, and the hunger inside me reacted immediately. The boiling fury eclipsed rational thought, filling the void left behind with pure, unfettered murderous intent.

Imagined “enemy” humans being murdered flashed rapidly through my mind’s eye.

I was forced to witness the brutal, bloody slaying of countless hundreds as their lives were cut short in as many savage ways as there were deaths. After only a few seconds, the hunger inside me cooed in wanton satisfaction.

Rather than staunching its vile gluttony, those thoughts nurtured the evil occupying my mental space. As the parade of imagined deaths continued without pause and grew increasingly gruesome, it smiled.

Horrifying but satisfying thoughts of predatory teeth sinking through defenseless flesh crept through what remained of my sanity. Venom destroyed healthy tissue and caused organs to seize up or rot. Bodies were torn asunder, their ragged remains splattered against stone Dungeon walls and floors before disappearing.

The hunger craved, and I began to as well.

No! I don’t want to. I won’t kill anyone, even if their steaming corpses would be delicious!

Panicking at the feeling that my conscience was slipping—that I might forever lose hold of my former self and my carefully-chosen values, I flared the last remnant of my willpower to claw back a piece of my sanity.

I forced myself to recall happy moments from my previous life.

I remembered my family. Rest their souls.

Erin, my mother.

She had a nasty temper, and sometimes she would take beatings too far, but she taught me to be a proper woman—to be honest, faithful, and feminine. Through her, I learned to keep myself and my living space organized and clean.

Alan, my father.

Always kind and patient, even when others didn’t deserve it, he protected and provided for all of us. My dad taught me to work hard and always encouraged me to chase my dreams.

I remembered my students and their smiles and their laughter.

I witnessed struggles and triumphs inside the classroom and out as I mentored young people and helped them to thrive in the pursuit of science.

My field experiments with spiders and snakes made me smile—until the hunger noticed and began twisting those to its own ends.

I forced those thoughts away after the kaleidoscope of deaths shifted, with many now involving spider or snake bites and the horror of lifeless, swollen faces.

The hunger cackled with ravenous glee while I suffered through the hell of my imagined dual reality.

But I was slowly gaining ground with my efforts.

After a couple more agonizing minutes, I finally mastered my mind again.

This is so awful. I’m… I’ve become a monster!

Like a patient viper, the hunger lurked silently in the back of my mind.

Deep in my “gut,” I knew that I would eventually kill unless I found some way to calm my new nature.

And I wept.

Four hours of silent sobbing later, I noticed the fog starting to lift.

Desperate for a shred of hope for my lost pups, I looked around frantically, but the only things moving were the ocean and its native wildlife.

Still, I continued to search while the weight of everything that had happened pressed down on me.

It’s not just this place. If a nuclear attack happened here, in Santa Cruz, that means…

If I had eyes, they would have nearly popped out of my head at the realization.

We weren’t even worth bombing.

I felt numb and unwilling to process the enormity of everything, but it crashed home anyway.

Oh, God. Since even we were hit, it must have been a total, global nuclear war. The whole world went mad, like some Cold-War armageddon flick.

Why?

I had no good answer to my question.

I could think of innumerable reasons not to launch nukes, but only one logical reason to do it.

Counterattack.

We would never launch first, so that leaves only one likely possibility.

I wanted to shake my head.

I miss my body.

My thoughts returned to the bigger picture.

Then again, the war in Europe was hardly logical.

It must have been some country’s leader who snapped at last. And if they did, then everyone else would follow suit, and…

I thought about the destruction.

And so, everyone loses.

I sulked.

After the fog burned completely away to reveal a hazy blue sky, I spotted a pair of short-haired men approaching along the beach just North of the Harbor. The larger man pointed toward my protective levy, and they both stopped to stare while I stared back.

The older, reasonably-stocky man had hazel eyes and gray spreading through his dark hair, while the other stood much taller. He was a massive and heavily-muscled hulk with blue eyes, light brown hair, supremely-confident bearing, and a chiseled jaw—all of which my thirsty gaze lingered on.

I recalled a certain tingle of pleasure and sighed.

For the first time since my transformation, I was glad I lacked a mouth because it meant I couldn’t be caught drooling like some spellbound ape.

The pair wore heavy combat boots and matching, slightly-dirty hunting camouflage. The short man carried a rifle, while the other had a pistol strapped to his hip.

My logical mind rejoiced that some people had survived while my feminine nature ogled their healthy fitness.

That big guy… holy shit!

Meanwhile, my Dungeon-half leered at the approach of potential prey…

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Minions: 0/100

Residents: 1/10

Denizens: 46

Traps: 1/5