Book of the Dungeon Maker Read online

  Dungeon Maker

  Volume 1

  Copyright © 2019 by Nata Valerio.

  All Rights Reserved.

  COPYRIGHT

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Table of Content

  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

  Prologue

  Ever felt like dying? I did but I am so hating the way I died. Why? The answer is easy, it was cliche as fuck!

  Yeah, the fucking truck took another fucking victim, and I even saw the bastard coming and dodged, but he veered and smashed me into a concrete wall. Just to spite me more, my soul didn’t move on immediately so I could see that the truck put itself in reverse and didn’t even have one fucking scratch after the smash besides the blood from my crushed body and when it sped away my soul was finally pulled into the great white light in the sky.

  Just kidding, that would have hurt since I was actually flying into space heading for the fucking sun, but then a really awesome looking magic circle array appeared and I was instantly swallowed by it. Everything went dark until I found myself waking up in a cold damp room with around 10 or 15 other people.

  Then a shit load of knights in armor came in and spoke in a strange language pushing us along until we were in a throne room where some old coot shot a ball of light into each of us which seemed to be a translation spell that was permanent. The next lines made about half the people in our group laugh and the rest sighed.

  I was the lowest minority who sighed and chuckled.

  “Greetings heroes! I am King Trace Wharton Heavenlight the Second and we have summoned you to help us defeat the demons!” the king said.

  When he saw our expressions, he frowned.

  “What is so funny! This matter is of urgent importance!” he shouted.

  “My colleagues don’t mean disrespect, sir!” The words came from a prince charming with blond hair tied in a sissy ponytail. The hair clearly dropped down to his shoulders, or he wouldn’t be able to have so much hanging back. On top of that he had a charming smile and an athletic body, plus shining white teeth.

  The king instantly smiled as he looked at the idiot.

  I rolled my eyes. “Great, a narcissist that likes to do the prince charming hero act,” I said out loud.

  More than half the men in the group almost started to laugh while the prince charming’s smiling face twitched as he forced himself to keep it up.

  I knew I didn’t look good, but still I was a cut above the rest and could say I was at least his equal. Though I may have been a NEET, that is, not in education, employment or training, I still left my house. I did lots of exercise and had a sculpted body, with a somewhat refined face with black eyes and hair. Still, because of my closed pessimist personality I had no friends and couldn’t open up so I was a loner. Unlike prince charming, I stood with my arms crossed and no smiling face.

  “Don’t be rude to this young well refined gentlemen,” the king shouted my way.

  “I act how I please to who I want, if you want my respect you need to earn it, but I need to thank you all,” I said with a bow, leaving everyone curious.

  “Thank us? Why?” the king asked.

  “Because I had died in the most cliche way. You wouldn’t understand, but my fellow ‘heroes’ might,” I said bluntly and the nerdier ones began laughing and explained to the others.

  “Alright enough! Let us get to it, this world is known as Altgar, this world possesses several sentient races and we humans are one such race with the protection of several dozen deities who keep us safe from the demons. Demons themselves have their own deities that conflict with us and most other races besides the dark ones. Most races have agreed to summon heroes so your groups aren’t the only ones. The reason being, because the demons are much more powerful. Like us they also summoned their own heroes, and we are forced back because of the sudden extreme push they gave,” the king explained.

  At that point I lifted my hand, and he looked my way.

  “I want to get this out of the way from the start, who started warring first? Was it the demons or was it the humans or whoever that wanted to ‘cleanse’ the demons because they are aligned with the ‘evil’ gods?” I asked.

  A number of people scowled deeply at the question but no one moved.

  “This war has been going on for over a thousand years. Even we no longer know who started this, and things have reached a point of no return a long time ago,” the king said. I nodded, more or less understanding that I would have no way to judge who was right and wrong in starting the war.

  “Now then, unlike us natives, besides those blessed for it, heroes are all summoned with a unique class and artifact. All you need to do is say ‘summon,’” the king said.

  We all looked at each other and shouted, “Summon!” in unison.

  Fifteen lights shone from our bodies and formed balls of light that slowly condensed and took shape.

  Looking at mister prince charming, his artifact turned into a sword with gems embedded into it. The people around us were really excited by that. Following that, all the others formed different weapons from staffs, to bows, sabers, spears, daggers, and all forms of weapons.

  Mine was the slowest to form and kept gathering more light released by my body.

  “This must be a very powerful artifact for it to take so long?” an elderly wizard said. He was the old man who cast the translation spell.

  Soon the light stopped flowing and took the shape of a white book, a pen, and a short sword.

  All three floated down and I took the book in one hand, and the pen and sword in the other.

  On the book’s cover were some words that said, ‘Book of the Dungeon Maker.’

  The name gave me a bit of a sinking feeling.

  “What sort of artifacts are those?” the king asked.

  The mage walked up and looked.

  “Dungeon Maker?” The mage muttered and quickly ran over to a pedestal with a rather large book and began to slowly flip through the pages.

  “While he is doing this search, everyone say ‘Status’ so you may see your strengths and weaknesses as well as your class.”

  Saying so, a blue window appeared in front of me.

  Status:

  Name:

  Ace Cross

  Class:

  Dungeon maker

  Level:

  1

  Health:

  500

  Mana:

  650

  Strength:

  50

  Intelligence:

  65

  Agility:

  45

  Wisdom:

  65

  Endurance:

  50

  Vitality:

  50

  Skills

  Dungeon Archive:

  Level 1

  This skill allows the caster to seal constructed parts of the dungeon within the Book of the Dungeon Maker and make copies.

  Can currently make la
youts for 3 dungeons.

  You can store only 5 different corridor layouts.

  You can store only 2 room types.

  You can store only 5 different traps.

  Magic Hole Formation

  Level 1

  This skill allows the caster to open a magic hole into a separate dimension where the constructed dungeon exists, it allows monsters in and out openly. The magic hole draws mana from the air making the dungeon more comfortable. Eventually, if seeds are planted or brought in by the dungeon targets, it can make natural drops like magic plants spawn,.

  Can currently make 1 small magic hole.

  Crafter

  Level 0

  This skill allows you to learn all craft skills for the purpose of making a dungeon.

  This skill level will grow with the overall skill of all crafts learned.

  Current crafts learned:

  None

  Short Sword Mastery

  Level 1

  Your master with the short sword.

  Increases damage by 1%

  Short Sword Arts

  Level 1

  Arts that only masters of the short sword can learn.

  Level 1: Double Slash

  Runic Writing/Language

  Level 1

  This skill corresponds to the level of comprehension of the Runic Language and how many runes you have learned and can use properly.

  Current runes known: 11

  Can be found in Runic Dictionary within the Book of the Dungeon Maker.

  Looking at the stats, it was rather uninteresting, though I found it funny how my mental stats were surprisingly high.

  “Wow, fire mage! Epic, I wonder how strong my fire can be. I can’t wait to cause widespread mayhem!” one mage said.

  “Heh, I got high priest, so beat that!” another man said.

  “Hey look I got knight, and there is information saying it can be upgraded if I get some requirements!” someone with a spear said.

  I kept hearing the irritating cries from the others who got a random common class that seemed to be upgradable. I saw none of that, meaning mine had no upgrade options.

  I looked at the guy that got the sword and saw a hidden smirk.

  “Oh joy, what a surprise, he got the hero class,” I thought.

  “Alright, all of you call out your class in an orderly fashion,” the king called glancing at his court mage who was shifting though that old book.

  One by one, people called out the name of the class ranging from knight to monk. Finally, the last two were me and pretty boy.

  “My class, is hero!” the pretty boy said making the king’s eye shine and smile.

  Then he looked at me with a cold look.

  “What is yours?” he asked.

  “Dungeon maker,” I replied.

  Chapter 1

  The room was suddenly thrown into a deep silence before the king stood up.

  “A maker of the dens of monsters! Arrest him!” the king shouted.

  “HERE!” the court mage shouted startling everyone.

  “What is it?” the king asked.

  “The class of the boy, it is written above his artifact, Dungeon Maker, also titled, ‘the trapper of monster kind,’ as well as, ‘maker of the monster killing labyrinth.’ This is a rare hero class that has a very low chance to appear and in its early stages is rather weak, and resource consumption is large, but in larger stages it can tip the scale of the war from his efforts in hunting huge numbers of monsters while aiding the businesses of the region he passes through,” the mage said.

  “So he does the opposite to dungeon lords?” the king asked.

  “His dungeons are very different. Dungeon lords settle in one location such as a cave and become a crystal and hive mind for its monsters and spawning new monsters. His dungeons do the opposite and attract nearby monsters, depending how it is built within his book and how it is set up. The traps are made to keep them inside and allow us humans to pass through and kill them, if we were to put it bluntly, the monsters are the invaders and we are the monster minions in the dungeon so traps don’t activate for us,” the court mage said.

  “So, I'm a money drain at the start… just great,” I said with a sigh.

  “Not really, you will just need to go train in crafting skills for a time, but that is even heavier lifting than what the other heroes will face. You also have short sword training and magic training to learn,” the court mage said making me sneer.

  “Since he isn't a dungeon lord that is fine, prepare the trainers for all the heroes by tomorrow. Escort them to their rooms, if any of them still want to look around, assign a maid to guide them,” the king said and stood before leaving as the knights saluted.

  I watched him leave and looked at the three objects in my hand.

  “Hey old wizard guy, what do I do with these?” I asked the court mage.

  “My name is Havorine Cloak, the Court Wizard of our Heavenlight Empire, not old wizard guy,” he said, but aside from a bit of irritation he didn't show signs of rage.

  “Yeah, still is there a way to put these away or something?” I asked.

  “Normally heroes only summon their artifacts the first time and stay with them due to the summoning time being lengthy. Normally we make some equipment that can hold each artifact. In your case, by tomorrow you will be given a sheath and a tome chain. The pen can simply be stored in your pocket due to its size,” Havorine said.

  I looked at the pen, it was a metal tip quill with a white body behind the metal point. It looked like an exquisitely crafted pen that would normally need an ink well, but not a quill that is normally the metal tip and a feather tail tip and a feather behind it.

  Of the three artifacts in my hand, the pen gave off the most energy, second was the book then the short sword.

  “Since I will get something to hold them, then it's fine, though can you take me to the library, I want to look up the runic language. I have the skill but it's still Level 1.” I ask.

  The face of the old wizard frowned, and he forced a wry smile.

  “The runic language is a rather complex thing, it's known as the Language of the Dungeons, and we humans only know a small number of its words and uses. Not to mention, no one knows how to put them into practice,” he replied.

  “But do you have a book with the ones that are known?” I asked.

  “Yes, there is one within the library, since it is a single book I will have the librarian find it tonight, so that you can study it tomorrow after your training,” Havorine said and I nodded. “Alright, please guide our heroes to their rooms.”

  At Havorine’s order, the knights gestured to follow them to the lower floors where there were more rooms. One by one, we were put into different rooms and when I got mine I wasn't shocked at what I saw. The room was simple, about 10x12 meters with three windows with stained glass, giving it a rather interesting glow inside.

  There was a bed on the left side near the middle of the wall, it was rather big probably a queen sized bed with some nice covers. A wardrobe was on the other side of the room and there were some rugs and random stuff decorating the room.

  I walked to the bed and dropped my artifacts on the bed and looked around.

  Walking to the wardrobe I opened it and found it empty.

  “Probably will get clothes tomorrow with maids invading my room and taking all the measurement like crazy,” I said to myself.

  I had seen far too many anime to not know the cliche pathway of everything.

  I could guess that either the top fighters would break the group of heroes up into a few parties or each hero would go their own way.

  I returned to my bed, picking up the book and opening it.

  The first page was somewhat blank. It had one large slightly darker square on the upper half, and on the bottom was a table with seven boxes. Remembering that dungeon archives skill I was at, it showed three pages for layouts with five boxes for corridors and two rooms.

  After the third page
was a single page with the words Runic Dictionary at the top.

  There were 11 words in total.

  Fire, water, air, earth, light, dark, ice, lightning, ball, spike, and enchant.

  I looked at the words and wondered what they were for.

  A moment later I looked at the pen on my bed. Picking it up, it started to lightly glow at the tip as the runes in the book also began glowing.

  “I see, the pen is made to write these runes,” I muttered.

  Since it was dangerous, I did the safest one and looked for a surface to write on when I realized, “This is magic, screw surfaces!”

  I held the pen up, pushing down with the intent to write. I felt an energy from my body flow into the pen, followed by a resistance at the tip.

  Slowly, I began to write the runes for ‘Light’ and ‘Ball.’

  When the first rune was done, I wrote the second next to it. It took ten minutes to write both runes, and at the end of it all, they crumbled into dust.

  “Fuck! Piece of shit! This is harder than I thought,” I cursed and looked at my stats and saw it took 50 mana to make both runes.

  There was probably something else behind the failure, let's see, normally knowing the principles of an element could always make it stronger and easier to cast. So in this case, light is a luminous energy source made of seven or different colors mixed together as well as many different kinds of light waves invisible to the human eye.

  Ball, so simply a sphere, round all around.

  As I thought, I began to write and soon the two runes were drawn. When finished they vibrated, before they were swallowed into a vortex. From it, a ball as big as my fist made of pure light emerged.

  As I put the pen down, I noticed that the ball followed the movement.

  I rotated my hand, and it moved to intersect with the line of the pen. I then flicked it to the left, and it began rotating around me.