Rogue Dungeon Read online

  Contents

  Summary

  James Hunter's Mailing List

  ONE: Heroes and Cowards

  TWO: Graf Manor

  THREE: Fallback Plan

  FOUR: The Citadel

  FIVE: Hearth of the World

  SIX: Mystic Grimoire

  SEVEN: PwnrBwner_007

  EIGHT: Troll Taboo

  NINE: Floor Boss

  TEN: Supplies

  ELEVEN: It’s a Trap

  TWELVE: Evolution

  THIRTEEN: Ancient Tome

  FOURTEEN: The Averi Marketplace

  FIFTEEN: King of Wolves

  SIXTEEN: The Art of Lettering

  SEVENTEEN: The Griefer

  EIGHTEEN: Tradecraft

  NINETEEN: Choices

  TWENTY: Formal Challenge

  TWENTY-ONE: Getting Ahead

  TWENTY-TWO: Down, Down, Down

  TWENTY-THREE: Azibek the Cruel

  TWENTY-FOUR: Partnerships

  TWENTY-FIVE: Death Trap

  TWENTY-SIX: Hammer and Steel

  TWENTY-SEVEN: Fresh Meat

  TWENTY-EIGHT: Backstab

  TWENTY-NINE: Incoming

  THIRTY: Showdown

  THIRTY-ONE: Looming Threats

  Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

  Other Works by James A. Hunter

  Other Works by eden Hudson

  Books from Shadow Alley Press

  About the Authors

  Dedication

  Special Thanks

  Copyright

  Summary

  Roark von Graf—hedge mage and lesser noble of Traisbin—is one of only a handful of Freedom fighters left, and he knows the Resistance’s days are numbered. Unless they do something drastic…

  But when a daring plan to unseat the Tyrant King goes awry, Roark finds himself on the run through an interdimensional portal, which strands him in a very unexpected location: an ultra-immersive fantasy video game called Hearthworld. He can’t log out, his magic is on the fritz, and worst of all, he’s not even human. He’s a low-class, run-of-the-mill Dungeon monster. Some disgusting, blue-skinned creature called a Troll. At least there’s one small silver lining—Roark managed to grab a powerful magic artifact on his way through the portal, and with it he might just be able to save his world after all.

  Unless, of course, the Tyrant King gets to him first …

  “An excellent start to a series, this book has everything I look for in a fantasy novel: action, intrigue, and evolution!” — Dakota Kruat, author of the Divine Dungeon and the Completionist Chronicles

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  ONE:

  Heroes and Cowards

  The last fiery red light of sunset glared over the peaked rooves of the village of Korvo, just violent and desperate enough to tear through the dark storm clouds that had been looming all day. In the snow-blown streets, women in brightly colored dresses decorated with shiny tin coins and men in dark jerkins over vibrant shirts rushed home from the afternoon’s errands, heads down, eyes on the cobblestones. The beggars and street urchins common to every settlement since the Tyrant King came into power had quietly disappeared into the dark, dank hideaways where they took shelter in times of inclement weather.

  If not for the furtive glances at the heavily armed Ustars patrolling the village, the citizens could almost have been hurrying to beat the coming snowfall. But Roark von Graf knew better. The shoulders hunched as if awaiting the fall of an Ustari ax. The skirts clutched just so to muffle the jingling of the coins and avoid drawing the patrols’ attention. The silence, that cursed silence, which filled the streets. All were dead giveaways to Roark’s sharp eyes. These cheerful, friendly mountain folk didn’t fear snow—they were bred for cold nights and snow-filled days—they feared the fist of a merciless tyrant.

  Roark sunk back into the shadows of the narrow alleyway as a pack of Ustars tromped past, fanged halberds in hand, snake-jawed helms all facing forward. Thick woolen cloaks emblazoned with the Tyrant King’s winged serpent whipped along behind them, protection from the cold, and one more testament to the fact that they did not belong among Korvo’s hardy people.

  With all the noise they were making, passing undetected was almost too easy. Roark listened to the clank of the patrol’s heavy armor get farther away, then slipped across the street into the alley behind the butcher’s. The cold mitigated the stench of the day’s refuse, but not by much. Feral cats and a mangy stray dog looked up from the entrails, regarding him warily as he passed. A battle-scarred tomcat laid back what was left of its ears and yowled a warning to stay away from the food.

  A bad omen if the Lyuko travelers who came through every year could be believed.

  “This was my city before it was yours, Tom,” Roark murmured to the territorial old grouch as he passed. “And it’ll be mine again after tonight. All of bloody Traisbin will be free, and you won’t even have to thank me.”

  The stench of rotting meat faded behind him as he followed the alley to its end. From there, a sharp left took him behind the motley collection of businesses that lined the street. No glow lit the windows of the dwellings over the businesses. No laughter, no children playing, no idle music or clinking of pots as food was prepared. Tonight was a night of silence, of fear, of anxious listening at the door for the sound of heavy Ustari boots thundering up the stairs.

  Roark stopped in the shadows along the rear of a fabric store, searching the alleyway and darkened windows for spying eyes. No witnesses who could later relay his whereabouts to the Ustars.

  As he ducked inside, a minor writ scrawled hastily at the bottom of the door caught his attention:

  Shoulde any baring the wingd serpente of the Tyrante King cross this thresholde the shelfs of fabrik along the walls of this store shall colapse with a great combustione.

  It was meant to sound the alarm if Ustars crossed the threshold, but it was done so badly that only someone displaying the winged serpent prominently would set it off, and then, the shelves which were supposed to collapse noisily—causing what the half-literate idiot who’d written it had probably meant to be a great commotion—would instead catch on fire, taking everyone inside the fabric store and half of the town with it.

  Probably more of Albrecht’s work, that careless buffoon.

  Shaking his head, Roark knelt inside and quickly rubbed the mess away with the palm of his hand. With his penknife, he carved a corrected writ into the wooden planks, adding a clause to make the carvings appear as nothing more than the scratches of a family pet begging to come inside. The moment he sealed it with the punctuation, the magick went into effect, the letters becoming incomprehensible canine scratches in the wood.

  Before the Tyrant King came to power, only the nobles and wealthy in Traisbin could afford to send their children off to learn the magick of letters. Since then, only those children the tyrant handpicked to be groomed as mages for his armies were taught to read and write. The odds that a literate Ustar would happen upon the writ were nearly zero, but if one of the Tyrant King’s guards recognized it as writing, his forces would converge on the fabric shop and execute everyone inside, literate or not. Mages who didn’t bow to the Tyrant King often found themselves without a head to bow.

  Potential village-destroying fire and bloody executions averted, Roark slid the penknife back into the hidden pocket inside his jerkin and eased the door closed.

  As he walked through the empty store, Roark ran his fingers over the many textu
res of fabric. It was an old habit from childhood, back when he couldn’t believe so many different tactile sensations could exist in one place: smooth, coarse, knobbly, velvety, gauzy, woolen, ribbed, woven, embroidered, satiny. Korvo, being on one of the few roads that led through the mountains, was uniquely suited to sell goods from both sides of the continental divide—a fact his merchant-minded mother had once been quite proud of.

  Behind the seller’s bench, Roark found a thick carpet pulled aside and a trapdoor leading down into the cellar. With a shake of his head, he banished the bittersweet memories and returned his mind to the matter at hand.

  The stone stairs had worn uneven over the centuries, but he took them two and three at a time with the easy grace of a child of the mountains. The murmuring of voices carried into the dark corridor, ghostly whispers compared to the solid clunk of his boots on the stone. A line of jade light leaked from beneath a door up ahead.

  Roark threw open the door, revealing the green-lit war room. Frightened gasps went up, hands grabbed frantically for maps, and chairs scraped away from the huge central table. Ancient tapestries flapped against the old stone walls, and the emerald burung fire burning in the sconces flickered before returning to full strength once more.

  A dozen pairs of wide eyes settled on Roark’s lean form. Only a dozen. This was the T’verzet, the Rebel Council. The last unified resistance against the Tyrant King, Marek Konig Ustar. And they were cowering in a basement like kicked dogs.

  “Graf, you nearly gave us a heart attack!” snapped Cambry, the elderly owner of the fabric store. The old man slammed the maps clutched in his hands back onto the table. “Shut that damn door!”

  “Is it true?” Roark kicked the door closed behind him with a heel and strode farther into the room. “That he’s in Korvo? That he’s staying at the Graf Manor House—” He slammed his fist on the table, rattling the cloudy glass panes in the burung lamp at the center. “My manor house?”

  Across the table, the scar-faced Albrecht snorted imperiously. “That house is as much yours as the Seat of Power is the Council of Ancients’.”

  Roark raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to point out Albrecht’s similar position in the von Herzog family’s former coastal holdings, but was cut off by an aged voice from his right.

  “You walked the same streets as we did, Roark, you saw the patrols,” Morgana said, folding her gnarled, arthritic hands on the table before her. She twisted the opal ring on her thumb absently as she spoke; the fat gemstone was proof that she’d once sat on the true council, handing down decrees for the entirety of the country. “The caravan was supposed to travel on to Moseley, but they can’t get through the mountains with the blizzard coming in. They’re waiting here for the pass to clear.”

  “This is it, then,” Roark said, excitement fluttering in his chest. “We couldn’t ask for a better chance. I know that manor better than anyone. All the back ways, all the ins and outs. I can get to him, kill him now before the weather clears and they move on—”

  “Absolutely not.” Morgana sat back in her seat, pursing her wrinkled lips. “We’ve no plan in place for this. It’s too much of a risk. If you fail—”

  “I won’t,” Roark said, brow furrowed.

  Albrecht threw up his hands. “Here we go! The lost noble of Korvo knows better than the combined experience of the entire T’verzet now.”

  “I know better than that gibberish you scrawled on the door up there,” Roark said, infusing his voice with a lightness he didn’t feel. “It’s a wonder you’ve only burnt off half of your face so far.”

  “Know-everything poseur,” Albrecht snapped, kicking up from his seat. “Acting like you’re not as self-taught as the rest of us—”

  Roark snorted. “Can you even say your letters, mate?”

  “You’ll want to watch that big head, Graf, before somebody kicks it in.”

  “Both of you bullheaded pups shut your yaps!” Cambry boomed with a strength that belied his aging body. He gestured to Morgana. “What the councilwoman was trying to say is, so far, we’ve been blessed lucky in hiding the seat of the resistance. One slipup—one hint that we’re here—and every Ustar in Traisbin’ll descend on this city like flies on a rotting corpse.”

  “I won’t slip up,” Roark said with every ounce of the confidence he felt. “I know that manor like the back of my hand—I could walk its passages in my sleep.” In fact, he often did when he slept long enough to dream. “I can get in and back out again before Marek himself knows he’s dead.”

  “The risk is too great,” Morgana said, shaking her head.

  “But the payoff is everything we’ve been fighting for!” Roark tried but was unable to keep the desperation from his voice. “Twenty years of the Tyrant King’s oppression, and we could end it tonight!”

  “Would you see Korvo burned to the ground?” Bran, the barrel-gutted innkeeper, asked, speaking up for the first time since Roark’s arrival. He leaned forward in his seat, bracing his meaty arms on the table, and continued in his quiet, measured voice. “Her people turned against one another as informants and snitches, turning their friends and neighbors over to the Tyrant King to save themselves and their children? Because that’s the price of failure, Graf. That’s what you’re gambling with here.”

  “Laying aside the fact that this is hardly a gamble considering my familiarity with the manor house,” Roark said, “isn’t it worth at least that much? Did any of you join the resistance without realizing you were risking your life and the lives of everyone connected to you? Because you’re in the wrong line of work if you did.”

  “Dammit, man, I’ve got a family!” the usually soft-spoken innkeeper thundered. Bran looked as taken aback at his outburst as anybody else. He lowered his head, collected himself, then went on in a voice once again calm. “I’ve five children and a wife to look out for, haven’t I? You may have nothing left to lose, Graf, but we do. You wouldn’t be so quick to throw it all away if you did.”

  Roark felt his lips pulling up in a contemptuous snarl. He pushed down the sudden urge to leap across the table and punch Bran’s teeth into the back of his skull.

  “You all feel this way?” His dark eyes slid from face to face in the green-lit war room, seeing nothing but fear and weakness reflected back at him.

  One by one, the so-called rebels lowered their eyes or glared back at him as if he were the one who couldn’t understand.

  “Cowards,” he spat. “If you aren’t ready to risk everything to free your people, then you don’t deserve to call yourselves T’verzet. When the right opportunity presents itself, you can’t hold anything back.”

  Unable to look at them for a second longer, Roark turned on his heel and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  TWO:

  Graf Manor

  Night had long since fallen, and the blizzard had blown in. Through the driving snowfall, the mountains were dark jagged peaks against the midnight sky. Roark crouched in the trees at the edge of the Graf Manor—his manor, no matter what that dolt Albrecht said. His only concession to the cold was a dark woolen jacket. The jacket’s many pockets were filled with scraps of parchment, each one inked in his neat, precise hand.

  Since leaving the Rebel Council, he’d spent the better part of the evening writing out every spell he might possibly use if this assassination became a battle for his life. Shield barriers, entanglements, stunners, illusions, elemental attacks, projectiles, poison, and plague—everything he could foresee being needed sorted carefully into offensive and defensive attacks and ready for deployment. Plus one special pocket, filled with a surprise, just in case.

  And for those problems he couldn’t foresee, his penknife was tucked into the breast pocket of his jerkin. The knife was his own design, forged not long after the Bloederige Noct, the Night of Blood. Its blade was thin and small as a nib, its handle long enough to hold like a pen. With it, he could cut flesh as precisely and quickly as a pen could write. That little knife had saved
his life more times than he cared to count, and his left arm was laced with the scars to prove it.

  From his vantage point in the trees, Roark could see down the southern wall of the estate. A small squad of Ustars hunched inside their cloaks at the carriage gate, stomping their feet and rubbing their hands together to keep the blood flowing. He’d already been around to the west side of the manor and seen the pair of snake-helmed guards watching over the much smaller servants’ entrance, both complaining loudly about whose nether regions they hadn’t kissed enough to end up stationed outside in a bloody blizzard.

  Roark stole through the forest to the north, the accumulating blanket of white silencing his steps. Snow-padded memories of late-night wolf hunts with his father, uncles, and elder cousins in these same woods flashed through his mind as he ran.

  It’d been the highlight of his ninth year, finally being old enough to join them. Though he’d tired almost immediately and his stomach ached with hunger, he hadn’t complained for fear they would send him back to the house with the women and the babies. He could still remember the rush of accomplishment he’d felt when they caught up to the huge beast. His cousin Dirk had made the kill, but Roark had kept up with the men all night long, packing his own spear, never once giving away their position. He was a man just like they were, and the slap on the back he’d earned from his father as they dragged the wolf home had proven it.

  Somewhere high in the mountains a lone maka-ronin—king of the wolves—howled, bringing a smile to Roark’s face. It felt good to be on the hunt again, and in his home territory, too.

  He stopped at the edge of the forest, watching the northern wall of the Graf estate. The tall stone barrier lay only yards from the mountainside, a snow-covered scree of fallen rocks bridging the distance between the two. Without even a gate to guard, no Ustars had been posted along this side of the estate. Arrogant fools.

  Roark slipped out of the trees and melted into the shadows along the northern wall.