Monster Mansion 2 by Dante King (best way to read ebooks .txt) 📗

bonded to Kyrine, the monster mansion. One day, I’d just been Jeremy Parker, assistant in a dingy enchantment shop in the city. Now, I was Jeremy Parker, Dungeon Keeper.

I was no stranger to magic of course—nobody was nowadays—but the things I’d seen since I’d met the agents and the dungeon were entirely new to me.

Since Gateway Day over a century ago, when the portal had opened between Earth and Eosor, magic had changed the course of human history. Through the portal had come the first Outworlders, magical races fleeing the destruction of their world at the hands of the Fateweaver. The Outworlders had sought refuge on Earth, and they had brought their magic with them.

In the decades that followed, Outworlder magic had become a catalyst for change and innovation in human society. Human cultivators harnessed the magic to become powerful spell-casters. Magic was utilized in industry, powering and enhancing everything from cars to computers to stereos and anything else you could imagine.

This had not always been an easy integration. Magic was open to abuse, and the Outworlder races often faced hostility from humans, and even from each other. Eosor, their home world, had been a very different place from Earth, and old resentments and interracial feuds were difficult things to lay aside. As the decades had passed, however, Outworlders were mostly integrated into human society, and their magic had become an integral part of the world.

After an initial period of unregulated magic use, governments around the world recognized the damage that magic could cause in the wrong hands. In some countries, magic had been outlawed altogether, but in the US, a level cap was enforced on cultivators themselves and also on the magical goods they could create and use.

This was a bit of a bummer, but at the same time most people accepted that it needed to be that way, and it was better than not being allowed to be into magic at all.

It was now 120 years since Gateway Day. Now, the world was going to change again. The Fateweaver had arisen once more. He had destroyed Eosor, and now he was coming for Earth. The Eosoreans, extraordinarily powerful cultivators on their homeworld, had not been able to defeat him, and that meant that Earth was in trouble—here, most people were limited to cultivation to a maximum of Level 3. The Fateweaver had defeated level 100 cultivators.

And that was where the dungeons came in. Dungeons thrive on expended mana. To get this, they attract adventurers to the dungeon with the promise of satisfying fights and valuable loot. Adventurers get to upgrade their powers, and the dungeon does the same. This would be the only way for cultivators on Earth to become powerful enough to defeat the Fateweaver.

Of course, none of this was widespread knowledge. As far as I knew, only me, the dungeons, and some elements of the government such as the EDI knew about the impending threat and the need to rapidly create an army of powerful magic users. How the hell that would be implemented I didn’t know. Thankfully, I figured that wasn’t my problem just now.

I returned my attention to the road. I was looking forward to getting back to the mansion. Since I’d arrived and bonded with the dungeon, Kyrine had revealed her humanoid avatar, a breathtakingly beautiful female who existed within the walls of the mansion. She was a lusty creature with large appetites and an insatiable desire to please. Our bonding had involved some of the best sex I’d ever had in my life, as well as the transfer of her summoning powers to me. Once we got back to the mansion, I was looking forward to absorbing the Cobra core I’d harvested from our last battle and testing my new summoning power.

“Here we are,” I said as the outer wall of the mansion slid into view before me. “Belinda, Selena, wake up. We’re home.”

In the back seat, the two other agents roused themselves. Belinda was a powerful psycher. The psychers were an Outworlder race who had mysterious powers of mind control. I’d already seen Belinda transform herself into a cloud of black fog and flay the flesh from her enemies. Her hair was made of long, purple tentacles that looked a bit like dreadlocks. Her eyes were dark and her expression thoughtful. Of the three agents, she was probably the one who I knew the least.

Selena, the third agent, had lived as my housemate for a year before revealing herself as an EDI agent. She was a cat-girl, a feline Outworlder. She had a long, expressive tail, longer than Astrid’s curling wolf tail. Her hair was black and straight, and her face was kind of cat-like despite being human in all other respects. Black-furred cat’s ears poked from the top of her head.

Selena’s job had been to make sure that I was the Keeper they were looking for, and she had played her part brilliantly. I’d had no idea. When I found out, it had strained our friendship for a while. Ultimately, though, life as a Keeper was going to be amazing. It sure beat living in a crappy apartment and working the nine to five. I was happy with the way things had gone, and so I didn’t want to hold a grudge against Selena. I’d made that clear to her, much to her relief. We would continue to be friends.

Belinda got out of the car and approached the big, wrought-iron gate in the high white wall that surrounded the mansion. She held up a keycard against the reader by the gate, and the gate swung noiselessly open. Belinda jumped back in, and I turned the Chrysler into the wide white driveway and began to drive slowly up toward the mansion.

The heavy gate swung smoothly closed behind us.

“So, how’d you like the car?” asked Selena. It was her car, taken out of storage now