PrinceCorwin

I'm trying to slow things down a little, because I have a tendency to rush my stories, let me know how the pacing feels to you.

The Uber lets me off at a nice building in the upper end of the city. Laura, Charles’s sister, yawns as she lets me into the building, handing me the key without a word.

Laura has always been a little standoffish to me for no real reason.

The apartment is on the seventh floor. It’s one of those nice penthouse sweets you see on the TV. Charles comes from some serious money.

A large living room with an equally large kitchen greets me. Specially designed furniture lies all around the room.

I can’t believe my brother turned away from this.

The best thing about the whole apartment? The size of its bathtub.

I mean, it’s basically a hot tub.

The first thing I do is take a nice long bath.

Once I’m feeling clean, I borrow some of Charles’s clothes, put on my glasses and pull the dungeon core out of my inventory. It’s still the same clear cube, except now the mist inside of it is noticeably darker than the first time I saw it.

“[Enter Dungeon Core.]” I say, The world warps around me, colors blending together until they reform into a familiar landscape.

Collapsed buildings lie on the side of the road, with vines crawling up them, and trees growing through them. The most surprising thing about the new scenery are the new buildings that have been constructed.

The Town Center that I’d bought when I was last here is now two stories tall, and the street surrounding it was starting to turn into a small village. Right behind the Town Center were three newly constructed buildings of different sizes, all of them built on the crumbling road. The first one was a barn, with two large wooden doors open. Inside the building were metal slabs with dead spiders in various states of dismemberment sitting on them. The building had the symbol of an X hanging on a sign in front of it.

The second building looked like a normal wooden house. It had a symbol of a vial on the sign standing on the ground in front of it.

The third building looked normal as well, if a little smaller than the other two. There was no sign for that house.

I turn away from the Town Center to see two more buildings, and a third in construction.

The two wooden houses that were already built both had no sign in front of them, and were smaller than any of the other buildings.

The final building under construction was the largest by far, it had a courtyard surrounding the stone house in the middle

Zombies walked back and forth through the buildings, although none of them actually seemed to be working on the building under construction.

I stop as I catch sight of my first skeleton. The creature wears the chitinous armor of the spiders, but it’s white skull is unmistakable. An eerie yellow flame dances in the eyes of the skeleton.

The skeleton looks lost in thought, it’s attention focused on a small yellow ball it holds in its hands.

No one notices me, and I’m fairly confident that my invisibility is in effect somehow.

“[Dungeon Menu]” I say, bringing up a familiar blue screen.

The dungeon is 4? What does that mean? It has only been a day since I started the dungeon up.

Looking over my surroundings again. it does seem like a lot happened in one day’s time. Maybe time moved differently here? It makes a little sense, considering how connected space and time are, and how this world is basically a whole other dimension.

I close the dungeon menu, mentally noting down that there are now forty-five monsters under my control now, opposed to the original thirty I had seen when I first started the dungeon.

I slowly approach the starting building, watching my surroundings curiously. I enter the building to see that it still has the same cozy atmosphere it’d had when I first saw it. The warmth of the fireplace immediately hits me. It’s a comfortable warmth, not a burning warmth.

Luna stands over the map that lays on a table in the middle of the room, her face frowning in concentration. I walk over to the map, surprised at some of the new information on it. On the south side of the map, the road leads into a forest and towards a mountain range. The forest had a large red circle surrounding it, with a crudely drawn spider sitting in the middle of the circle. A group of zombies were shown on the map, slowly making their way back from the spider lands. The images of the zombies were actually moving, making me wonder what other powers the map had.

I look back up to see Luna’s face deep in thought as she stares at the map.

She’s looking a little pretty actually, now that her skin isn’t falling apart in places.

God, I need a girlfriend.

Luna shakes her head slightly, sighing and moving away from the table to sit on a chair covered in furs. She closes her eyes, taking a deep breath, then lets it out. Her breathing starts moving in a pattern reminding me of meditation.

I decide to hold back on disturbing her for now. There’s nothing super urgent that I need to deal with.

That reminds me, I have gold I can spend on the dungeon. All of the dungeon upgrades are still out of my reach, but I could maybe buy one of the species that are available.

I glance at Luna out of the corner of my eye. It might be a good idea to talk with her before I change the ecology of her world.

She’s still resting, and I’d rather not bother her. I glance back at the notification I’d just gained.

Let’s go check out this undead craftsman. All of the upgraded zombies I’ve met so far (a total of two) looked very different from their brethren. I’m kinda curious what the undead craftsman will look like.

I leave the town center, wondering which of the buildings outside are hiding the craftsman. I search through each of the buildings, phasing through the doors in my strange invisible state.

Eventually, in one of the smaller buildings that didn’t have a sign in front of it, I found the zombie I was looking for.

The skin on his face and arms are a pale white, making him look almost human. Black circles surround his yellow eyes, giving him a tired look. His short black hair is tied up in a bun behind his head, and his calloused hands hold a beautiful spear.

My breath catches at the sight of the spear. Its head is made out of sharpened bone, which is intricately tied to the wooden portion with twine. It’s the wooden portion that makes me catch my breath.

Artwork unlike any I’d seen was carved all along the staff. The art itself showed one man fighting against a pack of wolves. As my eyes roamed down the staff, the fight was shown, the man giving his everything to fight the wolves until he finishes victorious.

“[What Is That Spear?]” I whisper without thinking. I only realized that I had used words with power in them after I said it.

Holy shit, that’s impressive. That weapon could actually gain sentience someday.

Feeling a little nervous, I do something extremely reckless, and turn off my invisibility. “That spear is amazing.” I say.

The zombie looks over his work smiling. His smile exposes unnaturally sharp teeth. “Thank you. I am quite proud of it.” His words come out crisply, sounding even more natural than Luna. He pauses when he hears his own voice, his hand reaching towards his throat in surprise.

Brought out of his reverie, he slowly turns to look at me, his eyes widening as he takes in my full appearance.

He opens his mouth, before closing it again with a snap.

“Who is it meant for?” I ask, doing my best to ignore his reaction to me.

“This spear is meant for the warrior, Bes.” He says, glancing over at the weapon as he speaks. “His last spear was broken in a fight against one of the lesser brood mothers. This is so strange.” He whispers the last part to himself.

“What’s so strange?” I ask, surprising him with my question.

“T-talking. I somehow know what the words mean. It is strange for everything to be so clear.” The terrifying zombie, that has teeth which look designed for ripping into meat, wrings his hands in nervousness.

I chuckle at the strangeness of the situation. “What is your name?” I ask, getting ready to go back into whatever that invisible mode is.

“My name is Adom.”

“It was nice meeting you Adom.” I say, dismissing the notification asking me if I’d like to name him. I don’t have the Dungeon Points to do that at the moment. “Hopefully I’ll see you again soon.”

I activate the invisibility, fumbling with the timing of my exit a little. Adom doesn’t seem to notice as he stares through me.

His throat moves in a gulp, before he looks back at the spear. After a moment, a wide smile spreads across his face, just a tiny bit wider than what should be humanly possible.

I leave the house to see the group of zombies coming back, led by the undead warrior who had helped me at the Beta Tester’s house. On the backs of the group of ten zombies are dead spiders, carefully bundled and recently dead.

They walk past me, towards the barn-like building that already has the spider corpses in various phases of dismemberment in it.

I look at them curiously for a moment, before continuing back to the Town Center. Inside, Luna is back to staring at the map, that same frown on her face.

After a moment of studying her, I deactivate the invisibility. Luna’s eyes widen in a way eerily similar to the craftsman’s when she catches sight of me.

She smiles after the surprise wears off, walking around the table with the map to wrap me in a hug.

I freeze in the hug for a moment, taken off guard by the familiarity of the action. I awkwardly return the squeeze before she steps back.

“It is good to see you.” She says, a trace of a smile still on her face.

“It’s nice to see you too.” I say, blushing slightly at my nervousness.

I am not attracted to zombies.

Although she is looking decidedly more human….

No! I am only attracted to completely human women. I don’t even want to think about what sex means with a woman who used to be literally dead.

Presumably. I mean, she did pop into existence, she might’ve never been actually dead.

I bring my mind out of the gutter with a force of will.

I blame teenage hormones.

Clearing my throat to cover the lapse in conversation, I say the first thing that comes to mind. “I’ve been thinking of adding creatures to this world. What should I add?”

Luna frowns as she returns to her thinking face.