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

“Ok,” I said, “I’m ready when you are. Let’s do this thing.”

Kyrine reached her hands out on either side of her, and after a moment Selena and I both stepped up and took a hand each. Then Selena and I joined hands as well, creating a linked circle around the enchanting table.

Immediately, I felt the dramatic effect of the magic. There was a deep sound on the edge of hearing, like a massive subsonic boom that I felt in my guts rather than in my ears. Then, a high, electrical whine, like an electrical frequency just at the top end of my range of hearing.

Kyrine stood still as a statue, her eyes closed, and her hands joined with ours, but Selena looked scared.

“Don’t break the circle!” I warned Selena. I couldn’t have said how I knew, but instinct told me that if the circle were broken right now there could be bad consequences. Sweat began to bead on Kyrine’s brow, and then I felt it too—heat, pumping out of the enchanting table as if it were an oven.

The candles flickered, and I glanced at the window. The view of the gothic fantasy city flickered, then went out. Outside the window was utter, impenetrable blackness.

This was getting creepy.

I glanced at Selena. She was looking scared, her eyes wide, staring at me and at the blank window behind me. I smiled reassuringly at her, though I was feeling far from comfortable myself.

The table began to glow a dull red, and then a sudden bright light shone out from the green ghost jade crystal.

With a lurch as if the carpet had been drawn out from under us, the room vanished. Everything except the enchanting table and the three of us, was gone. The second shock was realizing that we were now all dressed in black robes with the hoods up. All around us was blank space. There was no up or down, no floor, nothing but a swirling gray mist that seemed to surround us in a cocoon.

“What the…” I began, but Kyrine interrupted me.

“We’ve done it!” she said brightly, breaking the circle, stepping back from the enchanting table and pushing back her hood. Selena kept a tight grip on my hand, and I didn’t feel inclined to let go of hers either. I couldn’t feel anything solid under my feet.

“Uh, what have we done, Kyrine?” I asked.

“Why, we’ve created our new dungeon, of course!” said Kyrine, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. The enchanting table had stopped glowing red and emitting heat, but the runes on it still glowed steadily. There was no sign of the nugget of ghost jade, however.

“This?” said Selena, looking around at the mist. “This is the dungeon?”

Kyrine nodded happily. “That’s right. We’ll need to begin adding things to it, of course, before we can see anything. It wouldn’t be a good idea to move too far away from the table just yet. You might get lost!”

“No chance of that!” said Selena, laughing shakily and looking around at the mists. “I’m not going anywhere! How do we start adding things?” She looked down at where the gray mist flowed under her feet. “Can I suggest beginning with a floor?”

“Oh, yes, you should begin by putting limits on the space,” said Kyrine. “A floor, a ceiling, walls. Once you’ve done that, you can move freely around the space, adding things as you desire.”

“Add a floor,” I said, consideringly. “And how do I go about doing that?”

Kyrine shrugged. “I suppose you just… do,” she said, as if it wasn’t that big a deal. Then, despite her warning to us to stay close to the table, she wandered off into the fog.

“Hey!” I said. “Where are you going?”

“I’m returning to the mansion,” Kyrine replied. “You must take it from here. This is the role of the Keeper.”

Her voice faded into the mist.

“Shit,” I said to Selena. “I guess this is the Keeper’s job.”

Selena was still holding my hand, but now she let it go, tentatively leaning on the edge of the enchanting table instead. “Perhaps,” she said, “it’s something like your summoning technique? Maybe you could try approaching it the same way as you approach summoning monsters?”

I nodded. “That’s not a bad idea.”

I turned my attention inward. Within myself, I had two spheres of energy. One of them was my own center, a ball of magical light that was filled with my own core of energy. I guess it was my equivalent of a creature core. When I’d joined with Kyrine, I’d been gifted with a second sphere, this one exclusively for summoning creatures.

With rising excitement, I now found that a third sphere, smaller than the other two, had appeared within my center. I reached toward it eagerly, and a ping alerted me to a new notification on my Personal Cultivation System. Holding onto my awareness of my internal spheres, I opened up the Cultivation System’s display to look at the notification.

Stats: Dungeon

Status:

Blank

Name:

Blank

Level:

0

Creatures:

None

Traps:

None

Chambers:

None

Boss Level:

N/A

Times Run:

None

Mana Expended:

None

Adventurer Deaths:

None

Outside Connections:

None

Upgrade

Not available

Add item?

 Selena seemed to be growing more confident. She moved round the table, keeping one hand on its edge, to look at my screen. “Wow, you did it!” she said.

I nodded. It was taking me quite a lot of effort to maintain awareness of my core spheres and my Personal Cultivation System readout, so I experimentally let go of my core sphere awareness. Nothing changed.

“Looks like I can manage the creation of items from the screen here,” I commented with a sigh of relief. “Let’s give it a go.”

I tapped Add Item and a new screen appeared.

Options: Add Item

Floor

Ceiling

External Wall

 I reached for Floor and