Shadowcroft's Academy for Dungeons Chapter 25

Logan and the rest of the Terrible Twelfth walked at the rear of the group. Rockheart had insisted they come last, since they were the most pathetic cohort at the academy. Logan wanted to stay longer, but they had to get back to Arborea.

Logan was ambling with his friends down a straight corridor when he noticed the wall on his right wasn’t made of bloodstained stone. It was a wooden wall with nails and spikes pounded into long planks. It didn’t look right. Logan spewed out more spores, and he saw it was some kind of trap. A second later, his Fungal Vision showed him an invisible wall sliding toward them. That force field was very similar to the ones Chadrigoth could throw; he’d done it before during their Core Calisthenics class.

Logan was too surprised to call out a warning. The invisible wall slammed into Treacle first, throwing the minotaur back. He crashed into both Inga and Marko, who hit the wall next to them. Logan managed to trigger his exoskeleton just in time, the ridges on his body hardening around him. The wall had a central pivot, allowing it to spin. All four stumbled into a room off the main corridor.

They fell in a pile right at the feet of the tank and the cleric. The two dungeoneers must’ve gotten lost and pushed through another false wall. The tank was still wounded from the fallusk attack, and the cleric was dangerously low on Apothos. Logan thought they had a chance, especially since he and Inga had been working so closely together. With that said, the tank and cleric were still B-Class dungeoneers, which meant things could go sideways in a heartbeat.

They needed to work as a team, and unfortunately, Treacle had taken the brunt of invisible attack. He seemed to be unconscious and had somehow managed to fall on top of Marko, who was struggling to get out from under Treacle’s formidable bulk. The satyr wasn’t quipping, so Logan knew things were dire.

Logan had his exoskeleton. Inga, with her Lepidoteral Reflexes, had the instincts of a fly about to get swatted. She was on her feet in seconds.

Damn it. Logan and Inga were going to have to face down the Azure Branch dungeoneers on their own. And since their cores weren’t tucked safely away in an inner sanctum, defeat meant death. If the tank and cleric bested them, the raiders would crack their gems and siphon off their energy, and they would die. No second chances. No respawning. Game over.

There was room enough to fight, though they had to be careful. Every wall was made of the wooden planks, showing the pointy ends of oversized nails so rusty just looking at them would give you tetanus. A skeleton hung on one wall, his shabby wizard robes in tatters.

The cleric’s lantern gave the place a dim light.

The tank snarled and drew her sword. “I thought we cleared this level! I guess we missed this bug and her mushroom boyfriend?”

“We’re just friends!” Inga hissed.

Inga reached out with her right hand, hurling Moonlance. Her left arm transformed into a length of razor-edged quicksilver.

The blinding attack struck the cleric in the face, burning his exposed skin like acid. “Cuthbald damn you!”

The tank charged forward, her face a rictus of hate, her sword aiming to take Logan’s head from his shoulders. Logan pulled free the silver shield he’d earned back during his first dungeon run and summoned a flickering dome of red light. The sword smashed into the energy shield, sending up a fountain of crimson sparks. The attack was a powerhouse, and hairline fissures snaked their way across the energy dome. Chances were, the shield couldn’t survive another direct hit like that—Logan needed to act now.

He dismissed the red dome and let his Pollinic Affliction flow. A cloud of yellow spores exploded into the air and the tank swayed, raising her shield arm and wiping at her face. Her eyes were puffy and red and her nose was releasing a small river of clear goo. The cleric was also in the area of attack, and that guy got unlucky. “I can’t see!”

Logan felt like pumping a fist in the air. His blindness attack had worked! Tears streamed down the cleric’s red, blistering face. “Damn my allergies!” he wheezed.

The battle was far from won, though. It wasn’t like the tank was simply going to sneeze and run away. She aimed her next attack at Inga, but Logan raised his thickened arm, and that blade chopped into his chitin. It got stuck in his layers of extra-hard fungi.

For once, Logan wasn’t dismembered! Score!

That didn’t last long, though. The tank roared and flung him to the side, clearing her blade. Logan flipped ass over teakettle and smashed into a jagged spike covered in a fine layer of bloodred rust. It bit into his chitin and held him in place.

“Cuthbald give me sight!” the cleric barked. A magical light glowed in his eyes. He could see again, but it seemed Cuthbald didn’t make his followers Claritin clear because his face was still cartoonishly swollen.

The tank and Inga were exchanging a flurry of blows, Inga’s blade clashing off the tank’s shield and narrowly turning vicious sword swings. Inga was too busy defending herself to cast any of her spells or get to the insects in her pocket. This was one of the drawbacks of being a dungeon core. Many of their best abilities had to be prepared in advance.

Logan tried to pull himself off the nail, but he couldn’t get free to help Inga. Worse, the cleric of Cuthbald was closing in, which meant the astral moth was about to get double-teamed.

The tank raised her shield, golden ponytail swaying, and waded forward.

The cleric rushed Inga with his mace raised.

A rhythmic clapping echoed off the walls and resounded off the ceiling. The sudden noise, unnaturally loud, made everyone in the room pause.

Marko was on his feet, clapping and keeping time with his tapping hoof even as his goat eyes glowed with spectral black light. He seemed taller, far more menacing, casting fearsome shadows around him like a halo of darkness. Everything about him seemed diabolic suddenly, from the curve of his horns to his leering smile.

And that clapping was oddly mesmerizing.

A stupid look came over the cleric’s face. He stopped and lowered his mace slowly. After a beat, he dropped his weapon altogether and started to clap along. His eyes were blank above his dizzy smile. Unbelievably, he started dancing, poorly. Logan had seen nerdy groomsman at Lord of the Rings–themed weddings with more rhythm.

“By the gods! What is wrong with him?” the tank shouted, then ducked as Inga nearly took off her head with a flawlessly executed pivot and slash.

Logan finally ripped himself off the spike. He staggered into the fighter, using his momentum to push her away from Inga, giving Inga a split second of breathing room.

Inga’s untransformed right hand darted into a leather pouch at her belt, and it came out covered in flies. She flung them into the air, then caught the tank’s next slash on her left sword arm. The flies circled around the tank’s face, biting at exposed skin, burrowing into her eyes and nose, fighting their way into her mouth. They weren’t deadly but they were distracting as all get-out.

The tank swatted at the swarm and lashed out blindly with a side kick that caught Logan square in the chest, tossing him aside like a rag doll. His rubbery body, however tough now, simply didn’t weigh very much. It wasn’t like he had any bones to add some density. He landed with his limbs splayed out all around him.

Inga was pressing her attack, and doing a fair job, but impossible as it seemed, the tank was still fending off the attacks.

They needed an edge, and Logan thought he just might have the trick. His ace in the hole. A couple of them actually.

Logan pushed himself up onto his palms and released a pair of spiked violet spores, each about the size of a peach pit, which pulsed with a gentle light. As they drifted toward the ground, he rained down Rapid Growth spores, pumping stored-up Apothos into the purple pits. This wasn’t so different from what he’d done to Magmarty, but this time he wasn’t raising up a bunch of Opal Truffles. No, this time he was summoning his first real minions: Spore Wargs. Since the minions were tied to his core, at his current level he could only produce and control two of the creatures, but hopefully that would be enough.

The swirling spores burbled and morphed, expanding rapidly as they neared the floor. In seconds rudimentary limbs sprouted from the pod, followed by a snout and muzzle. In less than five seconds, the Spore Wargs were as large as bulldogs, with the same squat frame, beefy chest, and powerful limbs. Though most fungaloid minions weren’t known for being fast or agile, these beasties proved to be the exception to the rule. They were pale, their skin hairless and rubbery. They had no eyes but enormous bat-like ears that allowed them to navigate through a type of super echolocation. Best of all, their bite was highly toxic and could induce seizures or even temporary paralysis under the right circumstances.

Logan had come to learn that they were also oddly affectionate and seemed to retain crude memories even after a death-and-respawn cycle. These two he called Booker and Noodle Doodle—both named after the pups he knew he would never see again.

The deadly hounds didn’t need any instruction, but leapt forward, claws scrabbling across the floor as they launched themselves at the tank. With wicked fangs, one latched onto the tank’s ankle while the other jumped, crunching down on the tank’s shield-bearing forearm. The tank let out a grunt of pain and tried to shake the swinging hound away, but ol’ Noodle Doodle had a bite like a bear trap. She just dangled there, legs swinging, paws scratching at armor, refusing to drop. It was an awesome distraction, and one that gave Inga the opening she needed.

She spun left in a flourish of wings and hurled another Moonlance, slashing across the tank’s exposed face and eyes. The fighter screamed and recoiled, temporarily blinded and beset by Logan’s hounds. Inga darted forward and leapt up, legs cartwheeling through the air as she flipped over the tank and landed behind her on nimble toes before driving her silvery sword arm through a vulnerable joint in the tank’s armor, deep into the flesh beneath. Inga pulled her arm free, covered liberally in blood, but the tank just kept right on fighting.

That Valkyrie could take a beating. She was a B-tier cultivator, though. So, even tired, she was easily ten times more powerful than any of the dungeon cores in the room.

“I have had just about enough of this!” the tank shouted with a growl. She brought her foot straight up then slammed it down with a thud. Brown light rippled out, the stone floor underfoot quaking and creaking, razor-sharp spits of rock shutting up. The rock lances missed Inga and the others, but poor Booker—clinging to her ankle—wasn’t so lucky. The hound took a spike through the throat that neatly decapitated him.

“And now for you,” the tank said, turning her furious face on the remaining dangling pup. She twisted at the hips and drove her sword into the creature’s torso, dispatching it with pitiful ease.

So much for that. Marko still had the cleric ensorcelled, which was good, but they needed to find a way to take this damned tank out. Inga was giving it her all, but it didn’t seem to be enough, and with Treacle still firmly out cold, it was up to Logan to even the playing field. The question was, how? Trying to respawn the Spore Wargs wasn’t realistic—they took too much of his usable Apothos for that—but Inga’s Spike Flies had grown considerably larger since she’d first summoned them. They were now each the size of a quarter, and there were easily thirty or forty of them.

That… Now that Logan could work with.

He’d never used his Braincaps outside the simulated dungeon, but there really was no time like the present.

“Keep him dancing, Marko!” Logan called out.

The satyr laughed. “Like I’m going to stop this… sick… beat!”

Was that a Taylor Swift reference? No, couldn’t be.

Logan sped over to the cleric’s lantern. At the same time, he exhaled a wave of Braincap spores into the air through his frilled gills, right where Inga’s Spike Flies were coalescing, growing bigger and more fiendish.

Logan used the last of his Apothos reserve to create Rapid Growth spores, and he added them to the fungi that were already latching onto Inga’s insects. Small, ghostly green mushrooms bloomed from the back of each Spike Ffly. Exhaling and clearing his mind, Logan took control of the tiny critters. It was harder to do in real life than it had been in the simulated dungeon, but their time practicing had absolutely paid off in spades.

The flies finally reached maturity, and they looked like flying devil-head thorns—big soft-ball-sized flies with huge eyes, whirring wings, and spikes sticking out in every direction. No legs. Their attack style was simple. They dive-bombed their enemies and slammed into them, like living throwing stars. The Spike Flies then puked digestive acid onto their victims. It was gross, but effective. As a fungaloid, he could appreciate gross and effective.

Logan turned off the cleric’s lantern, plunging the place into darkness.

However, the Spike Flies were infected with his Braincap mushrooms. Glowing green lumps of fungal growth covered their black bodies, giving them some of Logan’s powers, including his ability to see in the dark.

Logan could also take over one of them, and suddenly, he was seeing through the eyes of a Spike Fly. It was dizzying, showing him a world of whirring movement in basic colors, but with enough clarity that he could discern the difference between a dungeon core and a dungeoneer.

The Battle Paragon was still clapping along, but it was clear he was about to try and cast a spell to light up the room. He never had the chance. Logan used the Spike Fly he was controlling and slammed it into the chest of the cleric. Half of the flies followed suit. Smack, smack, smack, the barbed insects punctured the cleric’s armor, skewering him on their thorns.

As for Inga, she too could see in the dark. She noiselessly moved to the side and leapt up again, wings keeping her aloft. The tank’s armor was far too thick to penetrate directly, but her face and neck were exposed. Lining up her blade, Inga dropped all of her weight down, driving the tip of her sword at an angle through the tank’s neck and deep into her chest. With a thought, Logan directed the rest of the flies to hit her from the rear. The tank fell forward onto her face as dead as dead could be.

A cloud of Apothos rose from her corpse—Vita Apothos mixed in a cocktail of Mallus, Morta, and Terra. Treacle was a Mallus and Terra cultivator, so Logan focused on the Vita and Morta energy filling the room. As he’d done a thousand times before, he drew the streams of energy into his center. There, it mixed with his core, adding to the knot. He wasn’t the only one to eat. Inga’s gem glowed with a lunar light as she took her fill, though it would take some time to cultivate the sheer glut of energy.

Except… Logan wasn’t getting very much Apothos. After taking out two B-Class dungeoneers he should’ve been rocketing up in rank, but he would be lucky to even get a single rank off of these kills. Then it occurred to him. Neither he nor Inga were in charge of the dungeon. Kyvandry would get the lion’s share of the kills since they were in his domain.

One of the walls swiveled open and everyone’s favorite blade ghoul stepped forward. “Hey, guys! Funny that you tripped into my trap room at the same time as the raiders. But dang, you took care of them in a hurry.”

Kyvandry knelt and turned up the cleric’s lantern. “You guys won’t mind if I keep their bodies and equipment, right? It’s nice to have a couple extra corpses to throw around here and there. And I love me a good knickknack or three. However, I will give you all a little something, something. You earned it.” He bent down, rifled through the cleric’s pouch, and removed the ghoul tooth. From the pocket of his leather butcher’s apron, he removed a little tin, which he shook, smiling at the rattle. “You get the cleric’s goodie, but I’ll throw in three more. I imbued them with Morta Apothos, so they should be perfect for a couple of you guys. Watch out, though, because they pack a helluva punch, believe you me. There’s a reason why the tank was so hot to get her hands on one.”

Inga took the tin and stuck it in a pocket. Idly Logan wondered if there were fly larvae or baby centipedes in the pocket. He promptly decided it was probably best not to think about that. Also, Logan was a little wary of swallowing teeth. That was rather disturbing. But then, pretty much everything that had happened since being eaten by the Reaper Box was disturbing.

The wall to the corridor opened on the central hinge and Professor Arketa stood there, sunglasses tipped, her headscarf writhing. “Oh, there you four are. Goodness. Is Treacle okay? What happened?”

Logan knew what happened. Chadrigoth had forced them into the trap room. Somehow, the Abyss Lord had timed it perfectly so the raiders would kill them.

But what proof did Logan have? None. None at all.

The blade ghoul bent and touched the minotaur, who was slowly coming around.

“Well, that was terrible,” Treacle moaned. “Did I break a horn? I hope not. That would be so depressing. I like having a matching pair, and my life has so few pleasures in it.”

Marko went over and helped their friend up.

Inga scowled. “An invisible wall pushed us into this room. At the same time, these two found us. We managed to best them, but if they’d have been at full power, we’d surely be dead.”

“Unlikely,” Kyvandry said. “I didn’t catch all the fight, but I caught enough. They never had a chance. Not only were they not the sharpest tools in the shed, but you dungeon cores working together would’ve given even Linraist Erejam a run for his money.” He tapped the side of his tiny nose conspiratorially. “These are monsters to watch, Arketa.”

The professor slipped her sunglasses back onto her face before adjusting her bulging headscarf. “I agree, Mr. Spencer. But you didn’t have any random traps, did you?”

“Every bit of torture, every trap in my dungeon, is meticulously planned, A. You know me. I’m not sure what happened, but I’m glad we didn’t lose any students on this field trip. Remember last time?” He winced and shook his head. “Ouch.”

The professor frowned. “We try not to focus on the students who die.” She turned cheerful. “Well, all’s well that ends well. Come on, you four.”

The blade ghoul waved enthusiastically. “Bye, guys! If you see Erejam outside, make sure you kill him good.” He turned to take care of the fresh corpses.

Logan and his friends returned to the corridors, stairs, and ladders out of the Slaughter Pits.

Logan did take a moment to punch Marko lightly on the arm. “Nice going back there. For a second, while you were casting that maniacal dancing spell, you looked like a true dungeon lord.”

“That was awesome!” The satyr smiled. “It was fun using some of my other abilities… other than drinking, of course. I’m just glad that Nataraja’s Wretched Rhythm worked. There was a percentage chance that the cleric would’ve ignored me. That would’ve been embarrassing… clapping like an idiot while you two were cut down. Not sure I could’ve lived with myself.” Those last words came out with a little more emotion than the satyr probably would’ve wanted.

“Well, the important thing is that your spell did work,” Inga called over her shoulder. “You saved us. You’re something of a hero in my book. Though, Logan’s Spore Wargs were quite impressive as well.”

Treacle sighed. “Not only did I get knocked out, but I can’t get that damn rhythm out of my head.” He patted his thigh as they made their way out of the Slaughter Pits.

The Terrible Twelfth found the rest of the group standing on the rocky ledge of the back door.

Chadrigoth didn’t even throw them a glance. The Abyss Lord stood with an arm around his undead girlfriend, chatting with the rocky Jimi Magmarty. Tet, though, had another look for Logan. She tilted her head, widened her eyes, and shrugged.

He nodded, and she nodded back.

Maybe she knew more about what had happened.

Logan would ask her once they got back to the relative safety of Shadowcroft Castle on Arborea. He was learning, though, that the life of a dungeon core was anything but safe.

Keep Reading Here: Chapter Twenty-Six