Dungeon Guild Read online

  Dungeon Guild

  Glendaria Awakens Trilogy -- Book 3

  A LitRPG Dungeon Core Adventure

  By: Jonathan Brooks

  Cover Art by: Melissa Green

  Copyright ©2018 Jonathan Brooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The following is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, businesses, corporations, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to any actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Artwork Copyright ©2018 Melissa Green

  Dedication

  To my wife, Melody, who spent the time to repurpose an entire bedroom in our house that I now use for an office. She scraped the popcorn off the ceiling and everything – now that’s love.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Krista lethargically watched various groups of players travel through her dungeon. This latest bunch was progressing quite well – they were using strategies that they had developed after multiple runs through the new floor. The Shrine located at the beginning of the dungeon allowed them to respawn and continuously improve their skills. At this moment she followed a specific group consisting of a Defender, Rogue, Mage, Archer, and Healer – they had made multiple runs through and were getting farther and farther each time. Right now, they were in the Orc Village and had a decent shot at finishing the Floor Boss despite not being decked out in massive amounts of epic gear. Not that Krista cared overly much – she couldn’t seem to care about much lately.

  Their Dungeon Core was stolen by a guild of epically decked-out players who took advantage of their Guardian’s incapacitation. From what Krista could ascertain, three days had passed since that life-changing event. After Devin had left to retrieve the core, Krista had a bit of a mental breakdown. All of their hard work and effort was negated by miscommunication, hurt feelings, and one crazy-ass psycho bitch of a Guardian. At first raving at the unfairness of it all, she then fell into a kind of fugue state where she didn’t or couldn’t pay attention to anything outside of her own thoughts. Fortunately for the dungeon, most of the required resetting of the mobs and loot was automated for the new floor.

  This didn’t apply for the first two floors, however. When she finally emerged from her wildly ranging thoughts (she wasn’t sure what pulled her out from her broken mental state) she saw that there were still quite a few parties of players challenging the bottom floor. They would respawn at the shrine she had built at the entrance and make their way down to the event floor – without having to kill anything on the way. Since she wasn’t actively paying attention to the dungeon, the first two floors were empty of mobs and loot because they had to be specifically reset by Krista.

  When she saw this, her first reaction was to immediately respawn everything on those floors. However, before she could go through with that action, she was interrupted by her thoughts again. Why does it matter? It’s not like I need to slave away at this when I’ll probably be “dead” in about 40 days. And anyway, why are they even here? We don’t have a Dungeon Core anymore so there is no need to keep running through. I guess they like all of the loot – and it’s probably good experience too. Oh well, if they feel like wasting their time I’m not going to stop them.

  Seeing no point in resetting, Krista left the initial two floors alone and tried to go back to minding her own business and thoughts. Unfortunately (or fortunately – however you want to look at it), she couldn’t fall back into her all-encompassing mind maelstrom. Eventually getting bored, she tried to amuse herself by watching parties of players make their way through the last part of her dungeon.

  At first, she just blindly followed along without really seeing them. When they started dying pretty regularly in the same spots, she started making her own “game” up where she would watch new groups enter into the instance and she would try to predict where they would die. She based her predictions on a wide range of characteristics: how they got along with the other party members, how they held their weapons, their name, their class, their race, and even the color of their hair. She was wrong more often than not, but it helped to pass the time. Inevitably, her thoughts began to drift as she observed the mini-battles ranging throughout the dungeon without really caring what the results were.

  Krista thought about the last conversation she had with Devin. She had just blamed him for Violette’s breakdown and subsequent expressions of love toward Devin:

  “I don’t know why she would have said that – I didn’t do or say anything I could think of that would make her think she loved me. Besides, I couldn’t love her – I already love you. I’ve loved you for almost as long as I can remember and there isn’t a girl alive – or dead or whatever – that could change that. I’ve only ever wanted to be with you – I don’t and didn’t ever want to be with her.”

  Questions, questions, and more questions arose from this revelation. He loves me? How am I supposed to react to that? Why didn’t he say anything before this? Why did Violette imply that there was a relationship between the two of them? These and other related questions were spinning around and around her mind in a constant cycle. However, the two most pertinent questions that kept coming up were, Do I love him? and How do I fix this?

  She couldn’t answer these questions because her feelings were mixed – she didn’t know what had happened between Devin and Violette. She knew that she cared for Devin like she would for a brother but had never considered his feelings for her before. She always assumed he felt the same way – they were so comfortable hanging out together that she couldn’t see it from any other viewpoint. Well, now that things have changed somewhat in our “living” arrangements, I can start to look at things differently. It would take some time, but Krista was sure she would figure it out eventually.

  About a day ago, she had tried to place Violette back into the dungeon – the option to do it wasn’t greyed out so she knew she wasn’t dead forever. When she clicked on it, however, she got a prompt warning her it wasn’t possible.

  ERROR!

  Guardians are only available when the Dungeon Core is present inside the dungeon.

  Please reacquire the lost Core and every previously killed or new guardian will be available for placement.

  So, obviously Krista wasn’t going to get any answers to her questions from that source. The only way she could realistically figure out all of this was if Devin managed to capture and return the Dungeon Core in time to save them all from deletion. She wasn’t holding out much hope of that because it seemed like an impossible task. How is he supposed to get it back from that Guiding Light guild when they are decked out in the best epic armor for their levels? Not only that, but it wouldn’t surprise
me if they have massive amounts of higher-level players that could take him out in one hit. And besides, isn’t he only level 30? What good will that do?

  More questions – Krista wasn’t going to be able to answer anything until she heard back from Devin. She expected him to show up at some point for a respawn since he was way out of his league by himself out there. She’d get answers one way or another – she wouldn’t let him leave until she had a good long talk with him.

  With nothing else to do, she went back to watching the groups of players make their way through her dungeon.

  Chapter 1

  “Sir, we have a situation – one of the Rangers has spotted a low-level Rogue making his way through the forest and avoiding our camp,” said Sh1fty over the guild chat.

  De4thfrmbeh1nd shifted his focus from the various reports of Divine Truth sightings and started paying attention to Sh1fty. Sh1fty, De4ths’ second in command, oversaw their Rangers and other scouts that were combing the forest, looking for sight of either the Guiding Light or Divine Truth guilds. Ever since the Dungeon Core was stolen, Reckless and a smattering of smaller guilds had banded together to hunt for the guilds responsible – their objective was to return the Core back to the Altera Vita dungeon.

  They wanted to return it for two main reasons: 1. They didn’t want a single guild to become more powerful than the others – ultimately leading to a super-powerful guild that would control and dictate most aspects of the game world 2. The experience and loot found in the dungeon (and consequentially the gold received from that) was better than anything else that could be found other than high-level raids.

  They had been tracking reports of their whereabouts for the last three days, sometimes losing track for hours at a time but ultimately finding them again when their scouts ventured out far enough. From what De4th could tell, they weren’t heading for any populated areas and were taking a circuitous route back to their guild castle. Reckless, and the smaller guilds with them, were trying to catch them before they made it all the way there. If they managed to make it back to the castle it would be near impossible to get it back. It was also a mystery why they hadn’t just teleported back there – but De4th was just thankful that they hadn’t.

  “Where is he heading? And can you tell which guild he’s with?” De4th asked. “We don’t want to start anything with another guild right now – we can’t afford to piss anyone off.”

  “From what we can tell he’s not in any guild and…well, his name is a little strange,” Sh1fty responded.

  “What do you mean, strange?”

  “Well, as you know, normally all player names are colored blue unless they are attacking you – which then turns orange. This one, however, is red – as if he is a mob. And his name is only ‘Human Rogue’, which leads me to believe he has somehow found a way to disguise his name and player status. He’s also heading toward where our latest reports say Divine Truth was last seen. We haven’t been able to confirm this yet, though.”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone having that ability, but I’m intrigued enough to want to learn more about this ‘Human Rogue’ – I just hope whatever he’s using to hide his name doesn’t also hide his guild. Pick him up but treat him as well as possible just in case. I want to find out what he knows,” De4th replied.

  Minutes later, two of Reckless’ Rangers dragged the struggling, non-descript-looking Rogue into the guilds’ command tent. They managed to tie him to a chair sitting near the central support pole and then stepped back, out of the way but within striking distance if needed. He was right, his name is strange – I wonder how he’s hiding his identity. At least I know he’s level 30…unless he can fake that as well.

  As he slowly walked around the mystery man seated in the chair, he couldn’t help but observe that the equipment he saw was impressive for someone of his level. Most of the gear was epic quality, had level requirements, and gave bonuses to Stealth and movement speed. This worried him a little bit because to acquire most of this gear you had to be pretty loaded gold-wise – or have a guild sponsor. From the reports he had received regarding the Guiding Light guild, Divine Truth had spent almost a million gold to fully outfit the raid group that ended up stealing the Dungeon Core.

  Realizing that they might have a spy on their hands, De4th determined to get as much information as possible before they killed this guy. It was almost a certainty that Divine Truth knew they were being followed, but hopefully they didn’t know where Reckless was. Let’s see if I can get him to reveal their location.

  “What’s your name?” De4th started out with an easy question.

  The “Human Rogue” just stared at him, various emotions flashing across his face. De4th saw anger, confusion, resignation, and even what he thought was hope flash by so quickly he couldn’t be sure that’s what it was. Two minutes passed by without any response, but De4th just stared and waited – he knew silence was his ally in this situation. He could yell and scream at this guy for hours and potentially not get any response. However, most people couldn’t stand the silence and having someone calmly staring at them usually got them on edge. This would lead them to involuntarily blurt out something in order to break the tension in the room – even if it wasn’t the answer to the question. This situation was no different – after five more minutes he finally got a response.

  “Devin.”

  Smiling inwardly, De4th asked, “Why are you here, Devin?”

  Strangely, this “Devin” looked surprised that De4th knew his name. It was as if he was used to speaking a foreign language and having no one understand what he was trying to say – and then suddenly someone could. “Just passing through,” Devin quickly responded.

  “Why were you trying to sneak around our camp?”

  “I’ve got no business with you – I just didn’t want to be a bother,” Devin said unconvincingly.

  “What is your…business then?”

  “My own,” Devin curtly replied.

  He’s definitely hiding something – I’m still not sure what it is though, De4th thought. I don’t think I’m going to get much information from him, but I’ll ask a couple more questions before we do away with him.

  “What guild do you belong to?” he asked.

  Devin appeared surprised, as if he had never heard the question before. He looked closer at each of the players in the tent, most likely looking at their names and guild affiliations. Everyone here was in Reckless, which made his perusal quick. Looking back at De4th, Devin cocked his head to the side as if he was really considering his answer. “I’m not now nor have ever been in a guild,” he finally said.

  “Where did you get all of that gear? Unless you’re rich, an unaffiliated player couldn’t afford the type of equipment you’re sporting at the moment.”

  “A good friend gave it to me…and why are you asking all of these questions? I didn’t do anything to you and you’re here interrogating me like I did something wrong. Let me go or kill me if you are a bunch of PK’ers. I’m not answering any more questions,” Devin assertively – but with slight hints of trepidation – gave De4th his decision.

  The Reckless guild was not a bunch of PK’ers, or Player Killers, and didn’t want to be known as one. That being said, they were not opposed to eliminating spies to limit the possibility of discovery. Thinking furiously, De4th came up with a quick, simple plan that would hopefully benefit everyone. He just had a couple more questions…

  “I’m willing to let you go if you answer two more questions for me. Does this sound acceptable?”

  Devin appeared to think about it for a couple of seconds before nodding his head in acceptance.

  “How did you change your name to disguise who you are and why does the coloring on it appear as a monsters’ would?”

  Apparently catching him off-guard, Devin froze and didn’t say anything for a good fifteen seconds. Looks like we’re not getting the truth out of him – he’s thinking of a lie right now. His intuition was proved correct when he finally got an an
swer.

  “I’m not sure why it is doing that – must be some sort of glitch. I’m sure it will fix itself at some point. I answered your questions so now let me go – I need to go get something important and I’m on a time crunch,” Devin answered. As soon as the words left his lips, he looked as though he wanted to take back that last part. He sat there looking resigned and stubborn at the same time, waiting to either be killed or released.

  Although he wasn’t happy with the answer, De4th was a man of his word and ordered the two Rangers still standing nearby to untie Devin and release him. As the walking “glitch” made his way out of the camp, De4th ordered both Rangers to follow him at a distance. He didn’t want this man to know he was being followed and their Stealth skill was most likely many levels above his, but he wanted to be careful. He had a hunch that if things turned out the way he thought they would, this Rogue would lead them right where he wanted to go.

  Chapter 2

  Devin was scared shitless when he was first captured by the Reckless guild. He was sure he was going straight to respawn, and he wasn’t ready to face Krista yet. He had to get the Dungeon Core back before their time ran out and if he died now he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to get to it in time. It was a measure of luck – and probably the fact that he didn’t look like much of a threat – that he was let go.

  He had been surprised that they could understand him when he talked – the last time he tried to communicate with another player it didn’t turn out so well. Something must have changed when the Dungeon Core was stolen. Now that I can speak to the players, maybe I can convince those who stole it to return it. If they were aware that they were going to end up killing Krista and I, they might be willing to make some sort of deal. Though not likely, it might be the only option that could work. He’d have to think on it some more before he got to where he was headed.