Chapter 15

The horizontal elevator worked out great. It used more of my resources, but I had plenty. That last adventuring party had given me a nice boost, something I didn’t want to think about. We all crowded onto the elevator and it moved us sideways down a horizontal shaft that I had made to reach the dungeon below us. I had to start branching out to find it.

It was a shame I found no Mana Vein. I needed three more to get the next level of magic.

“Whee!” Garnet shouted as she stood at the front of the elevator, her black pigtails whipping in the wind behind her.

I shook my head at my little sister.

Fara had dressed in her leaf gown and had her pouch on. Her long ears quivered. She looked like she was going to Disneyland for the first time. I guess visiting a dungeon counted as that. We reached the end of the tunnel in a few minutes, traveling nearly a mile out from the throne room. From here, there was another elevator that took us down.

And it was deep. Two miles into the rock.

Hagane adjusted her glasses as we descended. “The temperature should be increasing, Leo.”

“It’s hotter outside the walls,” I told her. “How did you know that?”

“The deeper you go into the earth, the hotter it gets. It’s a limit to how deep we can dig mines down. The deepest one, a gold mine in South Africa, has temperatures that are nearly impossible to work in. And you say this goes down two miles?”

I nodded.

“We should be boiling.” She looked at the walls and touched the smooth surface whizzing past. “But, I suppose, your dungeon keeps a controlled environment even with such pressures upon it.”

Fara was writing furiously with her phoenix quill, burning her words into the parchment. I glanced at it. The writing looked similar to cuneiform but looked more cursive. Like it had evolved from beyond wedge shapes being pressed into clay tablets.

I felt my own glyphs on my chest almost burning me for a moment. Cuneiform-like symbols. Cuneiform-like writing. What was the connection? I wished I knew more about ancient Mesopotamia. But it wasn’t anything I could do now. No internet for me to access. No Wikipedia for me to access.

Maybe I should get an academic or something for my next companion. I had four more I could get. Fire, Wind, Thunder, and Death. Who? I didn’t know any women who were experts on the Near East, did I?

The elevator reached the room I had made around the tunnel. The stone walls ran through the room. I couldn’t change them. They were a barrier to manipulating the Void Crystal. It had been the first time I ran into someone else’s will.

“Ladies,” I said, motioning to the pickaxes I had placed down here. “Let’s get to mining.”

“Lord Leo!” barked the wildhounds. They surged out ahead of the others, rushing to grab them. Slepkavi came next, the orc grabbing a pickax. She had an Amazonian build. Strong and sexy all at the same time.

Daant grabbed one and sighed. “I can’t hold anything in my paws, or I could really tear this down.”

“I think it will be okay,” Kin said, nodding to the pack of wildhounds.

Their black tails wagging, they were attacking the stone tunnel with enthusiasm, slamming their pickaxes into the joints of the stone. I watched on impassively. Garnet was daring around the room, flying and flitting and unable to stay still. Slepkavi hammered away with the wildhounds. They slowly opened a hole onto a dark tunnel covered in dust.

“It’s so deep,” Maya said. “I can’t believe it. I wonder where the entrance to it is?”

“Well hidden,” Fara said, her ears twitching even more than before. “No one ever found it.”

“Must be a shaft going up somewhere in the mountains,” I said, glancing up at all the stone above us.”

“It’ll be a labyrinth,” Mrs. Lucina said. “We should make markings so we don’t get lost.”

“That’s a great idea, Mother,” Kin said. It seemed the Light monster girls saw Mrs. Lucina as their surrogate mother the way the satyrs and werebears saw my mother as one.

“My webbing can suffice,” Nimhe said. “I can leave it to mark our passage. It will last for weeks.”

“Smart,” Garnet said and then landed on Nimhe’s back and hugged her from behind, riding her like a horse. “You’re so smart.”

“Thank you, little sister,” Nimhe said, the Dark monster girls seeing Garnet as their sister.

“Hela, lead your sisters,” I commanded. “You’re our scouts. I want you to find every active trap. The monster girls are all gone, but the defenses are still going to be in place. Our safety is in your hands.”

“Lord Leo!” Hela gasped and turned to me. “We won’t let you down.”

The pack of nubile monster girls flowed in and spilled in both directions into the tunnels. They were sniffing around, thrusting their cute rumps up into the air. Nimhe scuttled in next with Garnet still riding her followed by Prekrasnyy and Kin. Then Daant and Havas entered. Piaro ventured in next. Slepkavi had her sword out and was standing at the back with Usiku and Paanee, the rear guard. Fara edged closer and peered into the hole. Maya was at her side. Halia had her sword out, ready to leap into the hole if anything attacked.

“There are traps,” shouted Hela. “We’re disabling them, Lord Leo. Give us a few minutes.”

I nodded.

Fara squirmed, her hips wiggling from side to side. I could feel her excitement. We all could. Mrs. Lucina’s halo pulsed. Maya breathed heavily. Garnet was inside having fun. I was already regretting bringing her along.

I loved her, but she didn’t take things as seriously as she needed to.

“It’s dusty in here, big bro,” Garnet reported. She appeared in the breach no longer on Nimhe.

“Lose your ride?” I asked her, amused. I shifted my grip on my lightning spear. It doubled as a walking staff.

“She’s exploring the ceiling for traps. You might have brought more arachnes.”

“Too late now,” I said, glancing at Fara. She was on the verge of just darting in there.

“Traps are disabled,” Hela cried. “The tunnels branch at both ends. I could not tell you which is the right way to go.”

“Well, let’s go right at every option,” I said. “So long as we do that, we’ll get through any maze. Wildhounds, sniff down every branch about thirty feet just to make sure there are no dangers. You have point. Nimhe, you’re right after them, then Kin, Prekrasnyy, Piaro, Sviesos, Daant, and Havas. Usiku, rearguard is yours.”

“Lord Leo!” my monster girls all shouted together, all sounding so excited.

Halia stepped into the hole and I followed her. The tunnel was ten feet wide. The wildhounds had dug up floor tiles and pried out false ceiling tiles and wall bricks to disable the traps. A pit trap had to be walked around.

My heart pounded in my chest. We were the first people to walk in here in five thousand years. The thick layer of dust wasn’t surprising. I felt like one of those explorers who had broken into the Egyptian tombs a hundred years ago. Venturing into the unknown.

I smiled as I looked around. The tunnel was the same sort of bricks I used. If it wasn’t for the layer of dust, I could mistake this for part of my own dungeon. It was even the same temperature, comfortable.

And yet, it felt oppressive. This dungeon did not want me in here. I wasn’t the owner. Meskalamdug had been dead for a long time, but the dungeon still waited for him to return. Was his Soul of the Void Crystal sitting on her perch wondering where he was? Was she waiting in vain for him to return?

Or had she died with him?

“Brilliant and revealing, let the light of Lord Shamash float!” I chanted. A ball of light appeared in the air, the Beginner Tier Light spell shedding light for those of us who had to see. It bobbed before me as I followed my monster girls into the dungeon.

Heading right, I walked amid my monster girls. Garnet managed to take my left arm, my right holding my spear. She clung to me, humming in delight. Fara was just before me, her eyes darting around, recording her thoughts. It was slow going as the wildhounds and Nimhe cleared the territory for any traps.

Halia sneezed.

“Gesundheit,” I said.

She turned and glanced at me. “That’s a strange word.”

“It’s German for ‘Good Health’,” Hagane said, her eyes flicking around the tunnel as much as Fara.

Halia nodded and then sneezed again and a third time, making such cute sounds. I understood why, the dust was thick. The wildhounds were sneezing up a storm ahead as they sniffed around, moving slowly as they covered territory, working together to make sure they missed nothing.

“I am glad I do not breathe,” Hagane said as Garnet was the next to sneeze.

“Lucky you,” said Garnet.

“Yes,” Mrs. Lucina said. My busty angel-MILF’s nose twitched. She looked on the verge of one and then stopped.

“It’s coating my feet, though,” muttered Maya. “I can feel the dust starting to infiltrate my body. It’s so disgusting.”

“You should have Leo make you sexy thigh-high boots,” said Garnet, the only monster girl that wore anything other than armor, like Slepkavi had.

“I can taste it,” Paanee hissed. “Blegh. Every time my tongue flicks out. And it’s coating my scales, Massster.”

“I’m sorry for making you all suffer,” I said.

“It’s not suffering, Lord Leo,” Du called, her head shooting up and looking back at me. Though the wildhounds all looked similar, I could tell them all apart.

“We never mind, Lord Leo,” Sviesos said, glancing back at me. The will o’ wisp smiled dazzled, the roiling plasma, a mix of sapphire and azures swirling together, dancing across her cheeks. The first monster girl I had created moved with a light step.

“You don’t have to breathe,” muttered Garnet. “But that’s okay, big bro. We’re exploring a tomb. That’s so neat.”

We came across more branches, going right each time. Nimhe marked the walls with webbing forming an arrow that pointed which we had gone. Once, we hit a dead-end that had a nasty trap the wildhounds had disabled.

“It would have fired a giant gout of flame down the hallway and incinerated us all, Master,” Marwo reported.

“Damn,” Maya said. “Fire, huh?”

“Most of the traps are fire,” said Hela. “I suspect that was his primary glyph. But we also have found spectral traps. Life stealers.”

“Death magic?” I asked.

The wildhounds nodded.

“Fire and death, huh.”

“He was most infamously known for Fire,” said Fara. “Other than that, none of his Glyphs were known. He was an early one. The opportunities for him to get other glyphs might have been rare.”

“He had a lot of power but not as many options,” I said.

We backtracked and Nimhe put an entire web across the dead-end to let us know never to go that way again. We kept going, moving deeper and deeper until we came to a large room that had a circle inscribed in the middle of the floor.

“What is this?” I asked when we found the circle. Well, two circles one a few inches smaller than the other. Cuneiform markings were inscribed along the edges.

“A summoning circle?” Hagane asked. “Like used in magic?”

“Summoning what?” I glanced at my animated statue. “I summon with the Void Crystal. Why would he be different?”

“The markings are very strange,” said Fara, sketching it. “I believe they are what wizards use to enchant items and what their scrolls are written in. There are glyphs worked into it, too. Wind.” She pointed to three cuneiform-like arrows stacked on each other and pointing the same way. “And Light.”

I recognized seven arrows radiating out from a middle, their heads touching to form an inner circle like a sun with long rays.

“It’s repeated over and over at eight points on the circle,” Fara continued. “Then there is arcane writing in between. This is not dungeon builder magic. This is wizardry. Why would it be here?”

“It’s a teleportation circle,” Halia said. “Some dungeon builders figure out how to work magic. It links to somewhere else if you know the words to speak.”