Dungeon Master (Karma System)

Hizon had enough DP to begin another project.

Once, that would have been reason enough to begin purchasing creatures. He had built the Goblin Mines by adding whatever made his forces harder to kill and more efficient at killing anyone who entered. When Max’s dungeon began drawing away his adventurers, Hizon had responded in much the same way. He had learned that the first level was an instance, decided its Dungeon Master was an inexperienced fool, and declared a dungeon battle before his contracted adventurers managed to clear even that first level.

The result had cost him his dungeon.

Hizon had not become timid since then. He had become less willing to mistake ignorance for strength.

He stood in the upper office of his Undercity home and reviewed what he already controlled. The defense dungeon occupied an open valley designed to receive invading forces. The Ant Hill provided tunnels, traps, insects, goblins, and the Hobgoblin Artificer. Around their entrances, the Undercity had grown busy enough to earn reliable DP instead of depending upon a single attraction.

He could build another business. He could expand the defense valley or add more encounters to The Ant Hill. Either choice would make him stronger.

Neither would give him what he wanted.

Hizon wanted another dungeon core.

He had no intention of choosing a target simply because it was close. His previous dungeon battle had demonstrated how expensive that assumption could become. This time, he needed to know what he was attacking before he issued the challenge.

The first useful report came from a human merchant who regularly bought leather, medicinal plants, and monster parts from settlements east of Crag Mountain. He had stopped in the Undercity to sell several crates through one of Hizon’s stores and complained about a forest road that had become increasingly dangerous.

Hunters had disappeared. Trappers were finding empty snares surrounded by rings of pale fungus. A logging crew had abandoned an entire cutting site after three men wandered away during the night. The merchant did not believe the stories about singing mushrooms, but he had paid for six guards on his return journey and had no intention of sleeping near the eastern forest.

Hizon questioned him until the man began repeating himself.

The disappearances did not prove a dungeon existed. Forest monsters killed careless travelers every day. Predatory plants could spread through an area without serving a Dungeon Master. The merchant had never seen a dungeon entrance, and none of the frightened villagers he spoke with had either.

The pattern still interested Hizon.

He paid for reports from adventurers who had traveled through the area. Most knew nothing. One remembered finding deer tracks that converged from opposite directions and continued east in an almost straight line. Another had destroyed patches of luminous fungus after his party began hearing voices that belonged to people they knew. A third claimed that something beneath the forest had been killing animals for years, although he had never gone looking for it.

That made Hizon more interested, not less.

A dungeon that relied upon passing animals and the occasional lost traveler might have remained unnoticed for a long time. If it had grown stronger recently, its lures could be spreading farther from its entrance. The changes reported by the merchant might be the first sign that its hunting ground had reached paths used by humans.

Hizon took the reports to Max.

Max met him in an office overlooking the Undercity. The Trapmaster’s Course was visible through the window. An adventurer stepped onto the wrong stone, and part of the floor tilted beneath his party. Goblins working along the outside of the course prepared the obstacle for the next group.

"You think there is a dungeon in this forest?" Max asked.

"I think something is drawing animals and people deeper into it." Hizon said. "A dungeon would explain the pattern. Scouts can determine whether I am right."

He spread a map across the desk. The eastern forest covered a wide area. Hizon had marked the abandoned logging site, two hunting cabins, and each reported disappearance. The marks formed no clean route, but most lay along the western side of the forest.

Max studied the map. "And if it is only a dangerous forest?"

"Then my scouts return with that answer."

"If it is a dungeon?"

"They locate the entrance, enter far enough to identify its early defenses, and return. I build for what they find before I declare a battle."

Max looked at him. "That is more investigation than you gave my dungeon."

Hizon did not pretend otherwise. "I thought a new Dungeon Master with one instance would collapse as soon as numbers stopped protecting him. I was wrong. I do not intend to pay for the same lesson twice."

The answer earned a nod.

Max did not offer Quin, his elite unit, or creatures from the main dungeon. Hizon had not asked for them. The suspected dungeon posed no meaningful threat to Max’s full territory. If Hizon wanted another core, finding and defeating its owner would be his responsibility.

"Send your scouts." Max said.

Hizon selected five Eternal Souls who could travel without advertising their connection to him. Brannik, a hobgoblin scout, led the group. Two goblins carried mapping equipment and sealed sample containers. A hobgoblin familiar with mines and underground air currents joined them. The last member was a goblin tracker who had spent years following game through forests before Hizon converted him.

They left Crag Mountain wearing ordinary armor without Hizon’s markings. For the first two days, they traveled with a merchant caravan. They separated at a logging settlement near the western edge of the forest and rented a room above a crowded tavern.

The settlement had gained nothing from the danger in the woods.

Half the room belonged to loggers arguing over which cutting routes remained safe. Notices on one wall offered rewards for information about four missing people. A local hunter warned travelers not to follow lights between the trees, regardless of whose voice called from that direction.

Brannik bought drinks and listened.

The abandoned cutting site had been productive until workers began waking outside their camp. At first, everyone blamed alcohol. Then a sober foreman walked into the forest while two men tried to hold him back. He fought them hard enough to break one man’s nose and disappeared among the trees. Searchers found his boots beside a ring of blue mushrooms. They never found the foreman.

Animals behaved just as strangely. Dogs strained against their leads. Horses refused to approach some patches of fungus and became docile near others. Deer tracks gathered near the abandoned site even though the noise of axes should have driven them away.

At sunrise, Brannik’s party entered the forest.

They found the first ring of fungus before noon. Small blue caps grew around the remains of a tree. A sweet smell drifted from them whenever the wind changed. The goblin tracker crouched beyond the ring and found prints from deer, rabbits, and a large boar. None had stopped to feed. Every trail turned east.

Brannik sealed three caps inside a sample jar without touching them. The group covered their mouths and noses and followed the tracks.

The separate trails became easier to recognize as they traveled. Animals came from different directions, encountered patches of the blue fungus, and changed course. Some wandered. Others moved almost directly toward the same part of the forest.

The scouts found human signs among them.

A rusted hand axe lay beneath a bush. Further east, Brannik recovered a broken belt buckle and part of a logging coat. Neither bore blood. The people who lost them had continued walking.

The air-current specialist noticed the sound first.

It resembled distant singing until the wind stopped. Then it became a faint vibration that the scouts felt through their teeth. The blue caps surrounding them opened wider. Brannik ordered everyone to stop.

One of the goblins took another step.

The tracker caught him and dragged him backward. The goblin fought for several seconds, staring toward a pale light between the trees. When the others crushed the nearest mushrooms, his resistance weakened. He blinked, looked at the hands holding him, and cursed.

They wrapped cloth around their ears. The vibration did not disappear, but it became easier to resist.

Near dusk, the animal trails converged at a steep depression hidden beneath old trees. Fungus covered its sides. Blue caps released their sweet scent while thin white strands spread through the soil between them. The floor descended toward a split in the rock.

Bones lay outside the opening.

Most belonged to animals. Deer antlers protruded from a drift of leaves. Smaller bones had been pushed aside by later arrivals. Brannik found a human pack near the stone wall, still holding rope, dried food, and a purse containing a few silver coins. Anything that reached the depression had little interest in turning back.

No guards waited outside. No dungeon creatures maintained the route or welcomed visitors. The luring fungus did the work. It drew prey to the opening and allowed hunger, curiosity, or whatever influence filled the hollow to carry them across the boundary.

Brannik approached the split in the rock.

[Independent dungeon entrance detected.]

That confirmed Hizon’s target.

The scouts entered.

Warm, damp air pressed against their faces. Pale growth covered the walls and provided enough light to reveal a descending passage. The floor was cluttered with animal tracks, yet few returned toward the entrance. Several dragged lines ended at dark stains where something had been pulled away.

The first cave moths dropped before the scouts reached the bottom.

They were nearly as wide as a goblin was tall. Their wings released clouds of gray dust with every beat. Brannik’s party raised their breathing cloths and moved out of the narrow passage before the dust could trap them against the wall. Two moths died to arrows. A third fled deeper into the cavern.

The dust distorted distance. Stone walls seemed to bend, and Brannik briefly saw an opening where the map carrier stood. The effect faded after they reached cleaner air, but it confirmed that simple cloth offered incomplete protection.

The cavern beyond contained the remains of the animals drawn inside. White cords ran through bones and hides, stripping away what the dungeon had not already absorbed. Movement among the remains revealed three Mycelial Stalkers.

They resembled tall mantises assembled from layered fungal plates. Hair-thin strands spread from their feet into the pale growth covering the floor. Each creature reacted before the scouts completed an attack, sensing movement through the connected fungus.

The tracker threw a stone toward one wall. Two Stalkers turned before it landed. A goblin struck the ground on the opposite side, drawing the third.

Brannik used the divided response to order a retreat.

They had confirmed the dungeon, identified its lure, and encountered two of its early defenses. Going deeper would provide more information, but it would also increase the risk of losing the samples and maps they already carried. This was reconnaissance, not an attempt to clear the dungeon.

The Stalkers followed them into the ascending passage. They stopped only when the scouts crossed the boundary. None emerged into the forest.

Brannik’s party did not return directly to Crag Mountain. They circled south, spent a night in a different settlement, and joined another caravan heading west. Anyone watching the forest would see five adventurers retreat from a dungeon and leave the region.

Hizon met them in the Undercity.

Brannik placed the map, sample jars, recovered equipment, and written observations on the table.

"The entrance is here." He said, pointing to the depression. "The system confirmed an independent dungeon. Its creatures remained inside, but the fungus outside influences animals and people. Their trails lead directly to the entrance."

"Did anything identify you?" Hizon asked.

"We encountered no one capable of asking."

"The core?"

"Unknown. We withdrew after meeting the Stalkers."

Hizon studied the map. He did not need the core’s location to issue a dungeon challenge. He needed a confirmed entrance and enough knowledge to prepare for the forces that would emerge when the two dungeons connected.

The scouts had given him a beginning, not permission to become careless.

Their report also exposed the weakness in his own defenses.

Packed earth made up much of The Ant Hill. Open ground dominated the defense valley. Cave-moth dust and fungal growth could turn both environments against his forces. The Goblin Trappers could redirect attackers, and the Bombardier Beetles supplied heat and corrosive spray, but neither solved the larger problem.

The greatest weakness waited at the end of The Ant Hill.

The Hobgoblin Artificer was dangerous because of his intelligence and everything he built. His traps, machines, and prepared battlefield compensated for his low health and limited personal attack power. That made him an excellent boss for his instance. It did not make him a dependable final barrier between an invading army and Hizon’s core.

Hizon opened the dungeon interface.

Another instance would follow The Ant Hill. Stone, metal, machinery, heat, and controlled airflow would replace packed soil. During ordinary operation, it would provide a separate attraction for adventurers. During a dungeon battle, it would become the final fortified level before his core.

The Artificer would help create it.

Someone else would hold the last chamber.

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