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

“I’m with you there,” said Selena. “I got into the EDI because I wanted some action, and it was a good place for an Outworlder like me to get into an exciting job. But there’s a lot of people who are into it for the money, the politics, or the influence it can bring. Ramu Hornwell, for instance…”

“Hornwell?” I asked. “Who is he?”

“He’s the director of the agency.” She shuddered. “I don’t like him. He’s always got an agenda. He’s an Outworlder, like me. A Satyr. He’s worked hard to get where he is, but you can never fully trust him.”

“What about your boss, this Agent Amanda Fallon?”

Selena shrugged. “She’s okay, I guess. She’s a Drow elf, and you know what they’re like. All high and mighty about their heritage, and all a bit too close with the Drow underworld over on the west coast. Amanda’s a bit jaded, and she works too hard. I think she drinks, too. She’s worked really hard to get where she is, but now I don’t think she likes it so much.”

“You think I’ll get to meet her?”

Selena nodded. “Yeah, I think she’ll come out. This job has been a massive pain in the ass for her, what with all the failed Keepers before you. And having to work with me, Belinda, and Astrid hasn’t helped.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “You guys seem pretty effective to me.”

“I guess so. That’s good to hear. But in the agency, we’re kinda the misfits. Three Outworlder beastkin women? Yeah, there’s not many teams of agents who look like us.” She grinned wryly. “But I’d not be anywhere else for the world. Nobody wanted this job—Kyrine has a reputation—but we took it because no one else would. I think somebody was secretly hoping we’d fail.”

“Who would want you to fail?” I asked.

“I dunno. Hornwell maybe, or his bosses at the state department. Not Amanda, but someone. There’s more to all this than just the dungeons and the Fateweaver, that’s all I’m sure of.”

I sighed. “Yeah, someone’s always got an angle, right?”

“Sad but true.”

“Well, fuck ‘em. We’ve got the dungeon now! Your mission has been a success, and I’m loving my new job as the Keeper. Come on, let’s finish this dungeon.”

Chapter 8

Selena and I worked on our new dungeon until we were both ready to drop.  We filled it with loot, cool items, and stuff to decorate it. Once we’d done that, we moved onto traps, creating touch-sensitive floor pads that would fire arrows from the ceiling, cleavers that dropped from above doors, weighted netting that would fall from the ceiling, and a massive plate of spikes that would rise from the floor when an adventurer strayed too near.

I was still not keen on actually murdering adventurers with traps. Despite the massive level boost that deaths within the dungeon would give, it seemed unwise to actually kill people this early on. The solution was to make the traps trigger just before a person stepped into their range. That way, an adventurer would have the opportunity to avoid the traps and learn their location.

My goal was to give adventurers the opportunity to use the traps against the monsters in the dungeon. As Selena had said, the more the adventurers used the environment, the more their influence would help to level the dungeon up. An unwary person might still be badly injured by the traps, but it was unlikely that even a fool would be killed outright.

“We’ll need potions,” I said. “Healing potions to scatter around the dungeon in case the adventurers do get badly hurt.”

“Can you create them?” asked Selena.

I checked my inventory of creatable items and shook my head. “There’s nothing like that on here. I think we’ll need to return to the mansion and have Kyrine create a bunch of potions. Then we can come back here and distribute them.”

“What about monsters?”

“Well, the truth is I’m not actually certain how to add monsters,” I admitted. While we were talking, we had wandered back over to where the enchanting table still stood, right in the center of the big entrance chamber. “Look here,” I said, pointing to the menu items on my Personal Cultivation System’s screen. “There doesn’t seem to be any particular options for adding monsters. See here, how it says, ‘monster levels’ but there’s no place with an ‘add monster’ option.”

“Perhaps you need to actually summon the monsters in real time?” Selena hazarded, but I shook my head.

“That doesn’t seem likely,” I said. “Look at the way everything else has worked in the dungeon—different items to create, different menus on my Personal Cultivation System, even a new sphere in me for dungeon creation. No, everything in here is separate, contained within the dungeon space. I think the dungeon monsters are going to be separate as well.”

“All right, then perhaps we should return to the mansion and see what Kyrine has to say about it? Maybe she’ll have some… woah! Jeremy, look at that!”

I looked where she pointed. Absent-mindedly, I’d leaned on the enchanting table. As soon as I touched it, an image appeared hovering over the surface. It was a hologram, a perfectly rendered little model of the dungeon, stretching to cover most of the surface of the table.

I laughed out loud. “Wow! This is new! It’s an overview of the whole dungeon! Look, here’s the traps we placed in each chamber, and here’s the enchanting table in the center, and here’s us!”

Sure enough, little figures in black robes leaned over a little mini-enchanting table in the center of the middle chamber. And there, hovering above each room, was a new set of options.

Monster Placement Options

Add Monster

Add Boss

Add Buff

Add Debuff

“Holy crap!” said Selena. “You can place specific buffs and debuffs on