Rogue Dungeon: Troll Nation (Chapters 1 - 3)

Chapter One

Bloody Recon

The Vault of the Radiant Shield was located in a sand- and wind-blasted wasteland of brilliant red rock towers that stretched up into the sky like a stone forest. Roark von Graf, most commonly known in Hearthworld as Roark the Griefer—the newly minted Dungeon Lord of the Cruel Citadel—stood on the top of one such formation with Kaz, Zyra, and Griff. A brutal breeze pounded at him from the back, the edges of his cloak fluttering like mad as grit and dust bit at his exposed skin. 

“That’s it,” Griff said, gesturing a scar-crossed hand at a golden structure built on the tallest of the towers in the distance. “Atop that hoodoo there.”

The sparkling ovoid structure had been built around the top of the rocky spire like one of the massive soldier wasp nests, which slowly took over trees back on the steppes of Traisbin. It was an opulent thing of gold, white marble, flying buttresses, peaked archways, and opal inlays that glittered brightly enough to make him squint even at this distance. Glinting winged figures, no larger than wasps from this far away, flitted in and out of holes in the sides of the Vault, completing the illusion of a massive hive.

Beside Roark, Kaz shaded his onyx eyes from the last rays of the sun and leaned toward the golden edifice. “What are those little dots?”

“Malaika Heralds,” Griff answered, clutching a bronze spy glass in his gnarled hand. He handed the glass over to the Gourmet Chef, Roark’s second in command. “They’re the ones I was telling you about, Griefer. Final evolution—and named—every single one of them.”

Roark scowled at the winged shapes darting through the air. Griff had been the first of them to scout out Lowen’s base of operations. When the weapons trainer had reported back that each and every creature in the Vault of the Radiant Shield was a named mob—a term Griff had taught Roark for the monsters native to Hearthworld’s landscape—the creeping suspicion Roark had that he was running out of time before things with Lowen came to a head had turned into a certainty. Worse yet, when Griff had rattled off a few of the names, Roark recognized them from home. 

His true home, Traisbin, a world away. 

Viago, Marek Konig Ustar’s favorite berserker. Vittoria, chief of the Tyrant King’s Inquisitors. Barazel, one of the most vicious mages in Marek’s ranks.

Somehow, Marek’s right-hand mage, Lowen von Reich, was transplanting warriors from the Tyrant King’s forces to Hearthworld. It was this revelation that had forced Roark to risk coming to the Vault himself. He had to see it with his own eyes. Had to know how Lowen was doing it.

“I don’t like it,” Zyra said, fiddling with her enchanted wrist wrappings. In the fiery sunset, the Reaver Champion’s toxic armor seemed to glow black, a stark contrast to the snowy white ringlets spilling from her hood. “They’ve got the flight advantage, and without wings, there’s only one way in.” She motioned at the wide stairs spiraling up and up and up the side of the rock tower. “And you can bet they’ve got a guard watching that at all times. It’s suicide.”

“Not for us,” Roark muttered. “Let’s go. We aren’t learning anything standing out here.”

The four of them climbed back down the tower to the dozen high-level heroes waiting impatiently for them at the base.

As they approached, a golden-hued elf in black robes studded with emeralds stepped out to greet them. The nameplate [Braind_Fish] floated above her circleted head.

“Well, Reb, what do you think?” she asked Roark.

Though in his Troll form, Roark stood at a full eleven feet of ghostly pale Jotnar Defiler, twisting violet tattoos glowing the length of his arms and a pair of leathery wings hanging uselessly from his shoulder blades, the World Stone Pendant around his neck gave him the ability to cast an Illusion Cloak on himself once a day. What the heroes saw approaching was not the Dungeon Lord of the Cruel Citadel, but the lean, olive-skinned human Roark had been before jumping through the portal into Hearthworld. The illusion also hid his name under the spidery white text [Rebel_of_Korvo], which Braind_Fish seemed inclined to shorten to Reb whenever she spoke to him.

“The stairs are the only entrance accessible from the ground, but they’re hardly watching it,” Roark replied. “With your shroud magick covering us on the approach, we should be able to steal in without being attacked.”

“Saddle up, guys,” Braind_Fish said, nodding to the other heroes. “We got Heralds to kill.”

The elf, a level 31 Gravepriest, had them get into formation, then began to weave her hands in a series of intricate motions. Glowing sigils appeared in the air, a host of complicated spells—one to shield the party from Detect Life spells, another which acted as a Stealth multiplier, and even one for partial invisibility. Roark paid special attention to the sigils as she worked, curious as to how she was inscribing them on the air itself. Obviously her magick was a distant relation of Enchanting, one of his own Trade Skills, perhaps a form of Hexing. Something to look into, that.

While she finished the Shroud, Roark settled himself at the outside edge of the group, just behind Kaz and to the left of Griff.

Already being human, Griff hadn’t needed disguising before they came on this mission, and Zyra was similarly easy. With her willowy body and the hood covering her face and the onyx recurved horns poking up from the top of her head, she could pass for a duskier-skinned version of a dark elf. Kaz had been the tricky one. At nearly thirteen feet tall with blue-black skin, and fists bigger than Roark’s head, the Behemoth would never have passed for even the largest of Rogs. It had taken Roark most of a day to perfect the curse on the O-Rogiri armor Kaz was wearing for this mission. When worn as a set, it decreased the wearer’s size and strength by a full 30%. A devastating price for most of the heroes who roamed Hearthworld, but a negligible loss for the Mighty Gourmet.

Once again, his skill as a Hexorcist had proven to be invaluable beyond measure. Yes, it required Roark to think outside of the box, but that was precisely what he was best at. 

Once the shroud was cast and the signal from Braind_Fish given, Zyra and a level 28 Blackguard Rogue disappeared into the darkness, scouting ahead for traps and ambushes. The rest of the party followed behind, making their way through the forest of rock formations.

As they made their approach, the sun disappeared below the tower-studded horizon, and the sky darkened to deep purple. Overhead, the darting of winged shapes continued, but against the darkened sky, the creatures left streaky light trails behind them that faded slowly. Not ideal for stealth. Roark thought if he had a crossbow with appropriate range, it would be a simple matter to pick them off. Even better, a heavy ballista—or several—set up on one of the adjacent rock towers could have devastating effect if employed correctly. 

He stowed that thought away for later. 

Full dark fell as sudden as if someone had snuffed out a candle, and then it happened. The hive-like Vault began to glow a dazzling white gold like an oil lamp in the night. The gleam illuminated the canyon floor around the red rock tower, throwing long shadows in every direction.

Roark’s breath caught in his chest at the sight, and Kaz gasped audibly. It was beautiful. It was also going to be a nightmare to sneak up on. Braind_Fish’s Shroud had better be damned good if she wanted her party to make it within a hundred yards of the Vault’s spire.

Either the elf’s Shroud was powerful enough to hide them all or the Heralds in the Vault preferred not to attack until their prey had been coaxed onto the spiraling staircase, because they made it to the first step untouched.

Zyra and the Blackguard Rogue appeared.

“The steps are clear of traps,” Zyra announced, pitching her voice low to avoid attracting unwanted attention from above.

“You checked all the way to the top?” Braind_Fish asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“Three-quarters.” The Rogue offered a lopsided shrug. “We couldn’t go higher without being seen.”

If there were any shadows up there, Zyra could have, Roark knew, but he kept his mouth shut. They were supposed to be nothing more than mid-to-high level heroes, and as far as they knew, heroes didn’t have Shadow Stalk.

The elf nodded as she considered this. “Any kind of platform up there or will we have to run into the first room blind to keep from pushing each other off the stairs?”

“There’s a half-moon shaped platform surrounding the entrance,” the Rogue said. “Probably ten by twenty.”

“All righty then,” Braind_Fish said. “I want tanks first, two by two, followed by DPS. All us squishy spellcasters, we’re bringing up the rear. And make sure you’re aiming. We’re gonna be in tough enough shit without hemorrhaging HP to friendly fire.” She glanced at Zyra and the Rogue. “Once we make it to the platform, you two stealth off and see if you can’t clear the first room for us. Everybody got it?”

The group muttered an affirmative, then began shifting into the new formation, bulwarks of muscle like Kaz moving to the front. Roark found his place a few rows back beside a level 28 Wrath Ronin and pulled out his Bow of the Fleet-Fingered Hunter. The comforting weight of a full quiver immediately settled against his back.

Under normal circumstances, Roark preferred slinging spells to firing arrows, but on this excursion, he was posing as a level 15 Archer. Other than the exploding tips he’d cursed specifically for this mission, he didn’t plan on using anything that might give them away as Trolls. Not until he had to, anyway.

“Let’s move,” Braind_Fish said, her tone firm and ready, but pitched low enough to avoid drawing attention from above.

The troop began the climb up the spiral, weapons in hand. Armor clinked and creaked softly, fabric rustled, and boots scuffed against the steps, the sounds strangely muted beneath the elf’s Shroud. Below, the ground began to fall away, at first a few yards down, then a few dozen, then what seemed like a hundred. Having grown up in the mountains, climbing pitched slopes and sheer rockfaces, the height was nothing of great note to Roark, but the Wrath Ronin beside him paled and inched farther and farther from the edge until he was nearly touching shoulders with Roark.

They were less than a dozen yards from the top, the ground a faraway dream at the bottom of a dizzying drop, when someone behind Roark sneezed. 

Roark cringed. The sound bounced off the formations, echoing back to them even louder than the original.

“What the hell, Richard?” someone hissed.

Richard sniffed. “It’s allergy season.”

“Ever heard of Clearezitin?”

“Ever heard of mind your own business?”

“Shut it,” Braind_Fish snapped in a sharp whisper.

Flitting shadows overhead caught Roark’s eye.

It was not a flock of glowing Malaika Heralds, he saw as they dipped into the light, but a drove of stony beasts that looked as if it had been carved out of white marble. The creatures had razor tusks poking out of a boar’s mouth, wide marble chests tapering down to clawed feet, and the hunched back and muscular haunches of an enormous toad. Improbable wings of stone stretched up from the creature’s back, then flattened, sending them diving, tusks-first, toward the heroes.

Just above their heads floated spidery white text declaring them [Gargoyles].

“Overhead!” Roark shouted, lifting his bow and spinning to follow the dive of the closest creature.

The heroes turned their combined weaponry against the sky. Roark released his first shot amid a flurry of multicolored spells and thrown spears. His arrow slammed into the shoulder of a [Lesser Watching Gargoyle], detonating on impact and sending down a rain of pebbles.

All around him, heroes shouted spells and swung axes, staves, or swords. Throwing knives and ice javelins peppered the air, accompanied by a bevy of arrows. Seeing that the Gargoyles had quite a bit of Health in their red bar, Roark switched to firing off two and three of his cursed arrows at a time. Each one struck stone with a boom like thunder and tore away handfuls of life from the flying stone beasts. Dust and chunks of stone poured down from above. Kaz and the biggest warriors were out of Roark’s sight just around the curve of the rock tower, but he had no trouble hearing the Mighty Gourmet give a wordless bellow. Lucky Kaz had remembered he couldn’t use his accustomed warcry.

“Backs against the rock!” Griff roared over the frantic chaos of the attack. “Put your backs against the rock!”

Roark followed the weapon trainer’s advice, retreat a handful of paces until he was pressed to the gritty red surface of the tower. Most of the heroes, however, seemed too preoccupied with fighting the Gargoyles to hear or follow suit. A level 30 Bog Witch fired off a trio of blue-green fireballs from his Twisted Root Staff, not realizing a [Vigilant Gargoyle] was swooping down behind him. A moment later, the Vigilant slammed into his spine, knocking him off the stairs. His scream echoed up from below for several long seconds before he went silent.

As Roark spun to follow a [Lesser Watching Gargoyle] across the sky; he caught sight of Griff thrusting his old one-handed shortsword up into another stone beast’s momentarily exposed belly. The creature let out a piercing squeal, and ruby-encrusted entrails slopped from the wound. With a triumphant shout, Griff pounded his sword against his buckler and swung around to find another adversary.

A few steps above Roark, a level 26 NecroKnight screamed as she was swarmed by four Gargoyles at once. Roark peppered the largest and most vicious of them with arrows, pecking away at the beast’s Health and blowing craters into the creature’s granite hide, but he couldn’t kill it fast enough. The NecroKnight’s Health bar flashed out a warning, then hit zero just before she tumbled off the stairs into the empty air, surrounded by a halo of red.

The Gargoyle banked around and darted for Roark. Forcing himself not to rush and do something stupid like drop his arrows, Roark nocked a trio of shafts and leveled his bow, aiming the centermost arrowtip at the spot just between the creature’s eyes. The Gargoyle opened its tusked mouth and let out a porcine screech. 

Roark loosed.

The arrows smashed into the Gargoyle’s face, the explosion blowing its eyes and half its head away. Chunks of marble pelted Roark, but with a deft sidestep, he avoided being crushed by the falling stone body.

Zyra and the Blackguard Rogue appeared on the steps leading to the entrance.

“First room’s clear!” the Rogue shouted.

“Get inside!” Braind_Fish hollered, a line of brilliant crimson running down the side of her face. A reanimated Vigilant Gargoyle skewered by a multitude of ice javelins flapped and hovered by her side, a sphere of sickly green light enveloping it. As another Lesser Watching Gargoyle tried to attack, the elf’s necrotic servant ripped it to pieces. “Shake your tailfeathers, people! We’ll get the rest on the way out!”

It wasn’t a wise call, Roark thought. If they couldn’t manage to dispatch the lesser creatures guarding the outside of the Vault, he didn’t know what the elf thought they could do to the higher-level ones inside.

Nonetheless, he pressed his back to the curved wall once more and began running sideways up the remaining stairs, firing off one exploding arrow after another. He had only crafted a few dozen for this scouting mission, and he was nearly out. Roark fired off his last, then turned on his heel and ran for the gallery sheltering a wide, hexagonal opening.

As he sprinted into the Vault, Kaz and a beefy level 29 Executioner heaved shut a massive golden door. The answering metallic boom bounced off the shining golden walls of the room.

As soon as the door was shut, the Gargoyles outside seemed to lose interest in the party. A flaw in the Vault’s defense strategy, one that Lowen must not have seen fit to correct yet.

Safe inside, Roark gravitated toward Kaz and Griff. 

“Kaz has never fought Gargoyles before,” the Mighty Gourmet whispered to Roark, excitement glimmering in his onyx eyes. “The way they shatter, it is very satisfying.”

“That it is,” Griff agreed, rotating his sword shoulder as if to loosen a cramp. “Shame mobs can’t gain Experience from killin’ other mobs. Otherwise, we might’ve got ourselves a few levels outta that little skirmish. Wasn’t a one of ‘em under level 10. And a few were a mite bit higher, I’d wager.”

In the center of the room, Braind_Fish spoke with Zyra and the Rogue in low tones. A moment later, the stealthy pair slipped toward the far wall where an opening stretched from floor to ceiling. An accommodation for the flying and walking alike.

“Regroup,” Braind_Fish announced to the party. She nodded to an Arcane Battle Cleric and a Lifeblood Monk. “Patch up everybody you can and buff us good, then top off your Magicka. We need to be in fighting shape if we’re going to clear this place.”

While Roark’s filigreed Health vial was being refilled, he studied the vestibule. The white gold walls and floors emanated that bright glow from within. Even more illumination shined down from rose windows set into the ceilings, their shimmering glass scenes depicting gorgeous winged women who shined like the sun. There wasn’t a shadow in the place. Roark found himself squinting. After all that time spent down in the lower levels of the Cruel Citadel, his eyes had become sensitive to so much light.

A commotion echoed through the massive floor-to-ceiling doorway at the far end of the room. Weapons and spells leapt into hands. Roark traded his bow for a Superior Falchion of Ice, snowy crystals falling silently from the blade. It wasn’t his Slender Rapier, but it would handle nearly as well, and if he died and it was the item he dropped, he wouldn’t feel any compunctions about leaving it behind to be looted from his corpse.

Running footsteps and the rustle of feathered wings grew louder and louder until Zyra sprinted into the room. She was alone, no sign of the Rogue.

“Heralds!” she shouted.

A split-second later, three humanoid figures with vast, feathered wings darted into the vestibule after her. Ranged attacks flew, but the Heralds avoided them easily.

One, a woman with tawny hair and ocher wings, carrying a pair of flaming scimitars dove toward Zyra’s back while the other two shot in from the sides with shining halberds. Zyra tucked herself into a roll, narrowly avoiding the blow, which would’ve taken her head from her shoulders in one clean slice. Roark sidestepped her, then lunged for the closest of the halberd-wielding Heralds.

Just before his icy falchion made contact, Roark saw the nameplate over the herald—[Nitola]. A popular girl’s name in Traisbin, though he didn’t recognize this woman’s face. His blade scored a gash down her side and molten gold dribbled from the wound, but her Health bar barely dropped a sliver.

This Nitola wheeled in the air and darted back toward Roark. He pulled his body out of line at the last moment, executing a perfect mandritto riverso, but the Herald’s halberd changed directions faster than he could. Its shining edge bit into his thigh, nearly snapping the long bone in two. His leg buckled, pain flaring up and down the appendage.

And his filigreed Health vial dropped by a quarter. 

Nitola plunged again, deadly point of the halberd screaming toward Roark’s sternum. Roark pivoted sharply, knocking the attack aside with his off-hand, then swiping a descending cut, fendente dalla spalla, at her over-extended wing. Feathers sheared off, accompanied by droplets of purest gold.

Nearly too late, Roark saw the ochre-winged Herald with the flaming scimitars was darting in to his left at the same time. The first attack had been to distract him from the second.

Roark spun and threw up an Infernal shield with his off hand. It would give him away as a Troll if any of the heroes was paying attention, but there was nothing to be done for that. He couldn’t die and go off for respawn leaving his friends in this death trap.

But the ochre-winged Herald blew through the violet barrier as if it weren’t there at all.

Roark had just enough time to think, Because Divine creatures aren’t affected by Infernal spells, before the flaming scimitar chopped into his shoulder. Fire sizzled in the carved muscle, and red drained from his Health vial. He was down to fifty percent. Even with his incredible Defiler’s HP-regen rate, this was a fight he couldn’t survive.

Suddenly, the clash of combat around the room filtered through the tunnel vision he’d developed. Heroes were falling left and right under the Divine creatures’ swift, brutal attacks. Worse yet, the number of their enemies had doubled. Where there had been three there were now six winged angels of death swarming the party, and they were doing more damage than half the Trolls in the Cruel Citadel put together could’ve done.

As he watched, even more Heralds poured through the floor-to-ceiling door like those same soldier wasps when someone disturbed their nest. Dozens of nameplates, many common to Roark’s home world. He recognized one face—a bearded, scarred visage that he’d last seen trying to chop him in half with a massive battle axe in the tunnels beneath his family’s former home the night he tried to assassinate the Tyrant King.

Roark spun, searching the vestibule. Zyra wasn’t doing much better than he was, fighting as hard to avoid being hit as she was to score a single strike on the Herald she was facing off against. Much slower than either her or Roark, Kaz was limping along at less than a third of his Health, and Griff was holding on by the barest of threads, his red bar flashing out a critical warning.

If they stayed, they were all going to die.

Roark triggered his Infernal Invigoration, an umbrella of claret-colored light dropping over the weapons trainer’s shoulders and healing him back up to half a Health bar before anything else could touch him.

“Zyra, Kaz, Griff!” Roark thundered, the sharp edge of his voice carrying over the din of battle. He dug into his Inventory and pulled out a Single-Use Portal Scroll. It was time to beat a judicious retreat.

When Roark broke the seal on the scroll, the sparkling blue portal opened in midair. Zyra was the first to dive through, not even a heartbeat of hesitation in her steps. Griff sprinted through behind her, his wiry arms pumping, his chest heaving with effort. Braind_Fish, the elf leading this party, turned just in time to see Kaz backpedal away from a cackling Herald and into the shimmering portal.

“Hey, what the balls?” she yelled, eyes locking on Roark, her face twisting in a combination of fury and outrage.

“We’re bowing out gracefully before we’re murdered,” Roark answered. “Thanks for covering our retreat, mate. We won’t forget your sacrifice.”

“You dick!” she screeched, aiming an open palm at him.

Roark jumped into the portal before she could fire the spell at him.

As the usual sensations of chill wind and being taken apart and put back together of Hearthworld portals replaced the burning flush of fighting, the ugly truth settled in Roark’s gut. Lowen was mobilizing for an attack, and with that many combatants already in place, he had to be nearly ready. Even with the help of every Troll in the Cruel Citadel, there was no way Roark could hold him off.

 

Chapter 2

Griefer Blues

Scott Bayani unlocked and shouldered open the door of his shitty studio apartment, tossed his keys onto the kitchen table, and flung his Taco Bell visor across the dark room. It landed on the couch beside his InfiniTab, triggering the motion sensor alert system. A gorgeous, naked redhead flashed to life in midair. The holograph flickered slightly as Scott walked through it, peeling off his uniform shirt.

“Hey sexy,” the redhead purred, tousling her long hair and batting heavy eyelids at him, “you have eight unread notifications from today. Would you like me to read—”

“Delete,” Scott snapped. 

“Are you sure?” she purred, rubbing a hand along her chest.

“Yes,” he replied flatly, hardly noticing or caring about the holograph. 

The notifications would all be from his stupid guild anyway wanting to know where the hell Pwnrbwner had been for the last week. Or it would be Kelly and Kevin wanting him to help power-level their alts or get some stupid enchanted armor.

He shook his head. It was all so fucking stupid. Just a fucking game. 

Well, Scott Bayani wasn’t playing anymore. For all he cared, Pwnbwner_OG and his various alts could rot away in the limbo of unused characters. Let the wonder twins and everybody in his guild waste their pathetic lives in a made-up world where nothing you did mattered, and you never got any closer to winning because some modding asshole fucking cheated you at the last second. Sometimes it was a sudden evolution and overpowered spells that weren’t even a part of the game, sometimes it was exploding weaponized severed heads. But it was always bullshit.

Scott emptied his pockets on the table, then shucked out of the rest of his clothes and left them where they fell. He needed a shower. He stunk like ground up chihuahua meat and the Bell’s All-New Baja Blast Twists.

“All right, sexy,” the redhead said. “Eight unread notifications deleted. Is there anything else I can—”

“No,” he said without looking over his shoulder. “Go back to sleep. No, you know what? Shut down. All the way.”

There was no reason to keep it on. He wasn’t going to be logging in anytime soon.

“Okay, sexy,” the redhead said. “Shutting down. I’ll miss you.”

The apartment went dark.

“Yeah, well, I won’t miss you,” Scott grumbled, stepping into his tiny bathroom. He had to turn sideways and edge between the toilet and the sink to get to the shower. “Probably sell you to somebody too dumb to know what a waste you are.”

He cranked the shower knob. Of course the hot water was still broken. That lazy-ass super was probably waiting around until Scott complained to the building manager again. Well, he wouldn’t have to wait long. One freezing shower and Scott would be good and ready to spam them both with complaints. Not that anybody would do anything about it. That was one thing Hearthworld and the real world had in common: a severe lack of people doing their jobs to fix the problems that came up.

Scott held his breath, shielded his junk, and ducked into the icy spray. He’d tried to brace himself for the cold, but let out a shriek anyway as it pelted his chest.

Welcome to reality. Working shitty hours to pay for a shitty apartment where you couldn’t even get a hot shower. No awesome magic flying from your gauntleted fists, no slaying hordes of evil monsters in kickass combat, no feeling of accomplishment from leveling up.

But also no cheating griefers.

He shivered as he raced through washing his hair. His fingertips were starting to tingle, and it felt like his skin was on fire.

Life was a system of tradeoffs, and it turned out they all sucked. But as long as that dickface Roark was out of the equation, Scott was happy.

Well, maybe not happy. Whatever he was, at least he didn’t have to listen to that fake-ass pirate accent snarking out stupid lines that ended in mate. Man, what he wouldn’t give to punch the life out of that smug Troll face with his bare hands just once—

But no. That kind of thinking just made shit worse. He was so done. That modding punk could find somebody else to kick around, because Scott Bayani was never going back.

He shut off the water with almost-numb hands, sidestepped out of the bathroom, and toweled off.

The sun was coming up outside his dirt-encrusted window, the weak light beginning to illuminate the dumpy couch, clothing-strewn floors, and old pizza boxes. Scott sighed with a combination of disgust and resignation, then began the search for some sweats that didn’t need to be washed yet.

This was his life now. Time to get used to it.

Chapter Three

Clockwork Killing Machine

Roark sat drumming his fingers on the arm of the carved onxy throne in the Keep, the Cruel Citadel’s lowest level. Though the Dungeon Lord’s throne was massive—made to accommodate a fully winged Jotnar Exarch half again the size of Roark’s Defiler evolution—he perched on the edge of the seat. A snoring Young Turtle Dragon was curled around him, taking up the rest of the space between him and the seat back.

Mac’s evolution had taken him from three hundred pounds of sticky, fat-padded Stone Salamander to five hundred pounds of wicked-looking spiked shell, dark ever-shifting scales, and deadly venomous scorpial stinger. The sleeping creature chirped muzzily, stretching out his legs and accidentally slicing a series of clawmarks into Roark’s boiled leather armor with his razor-sharp talons.

Roark glanced down at the slashes without really seeing them. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lowen and the Vault of the Radiant Shield. Griff had said that Malaika was the final evolution for Heralds, their most powerful form, and that had proven more than true in the battle. If Braind_Fish’s party of heroes had attacked the Citadel instead, it would have taken at least twice as many Trolls to defeat them. And that was if the Trolls utilized the many traps and ambush points Roark had modified the Citadel to contain. Lowen’s Heralds had attacked them in an open chamber—no traps, no tricks, no confined spaces—and massacred them with sheer brute force.

It was much like Lowen’s spell writing. Overwhelming power, but no finesse. There had to be a way to use that against him.

Idly, Roark opened his mystic grimoire and turned to the Troll Evolution chart before finally selecting the ribbon marked Character.

He was a full 9 levels away from his final evolution. At 36, he would have to choose between Exarch—the Jotnar path of physical strength—and Infernali—the path of magick. Not much of a dilemma there. With his Hexorcist abilities, Infernali would undoubtedly open up an untold wealth of devious, lethal new curses. Roark had never seen an Infernali in person—none of the Trolls in the Cruel Citadel had—so he had no idea what to expect. But if the Infernali form was even half as formidable as Azibek’s Exarc form had been, he would be a leviathan of power.

Even so, that might not be enough to defeat Lowen. And if by some miracle Roark did manage to kill the ass, Lowen would just respawn in two hours like every other mob in Hearthworld. And not just Lowen, but the fighting force he’d brought into this world as well. The ensuing war would be endless until one of them figured out a way to kill the other forever. That or until Lowen found a way to break Hearthworld’s soulbound magic and take back the World Stone Amulet from Roark, which was the real reason the Tyrant King was so interested in this place. 

That Amulet, stolen from the Marek, utilized powers Roark still didn’t fully understand, but clearly it was worth wagging an interdimensional war for. Roark strongly suspected that he’d ended up in Hearthworld partly because of the Amulet, though that begged the question: how in the seven bloody hells had Lowen managed to follow him here? 

Such a magical feat shouldn’t have been possible. And bringing through a small army of the Tyrant King’s underlings? Inconceivable. In Traisbin, portal magic was treacherously unreliable. Even the simplest portal spell was as likely to drop the caster into the mouth of a bubbling volcano or in midair several thousand feet above the ground as it was to deposit them unharmed a few miles shy of their target. It shouldn’t have worked, but somehow Lowen had done it. If Roark could find out how he’d managed it, maybe he could force Lowen back through to Traisbin where he could be properly and permanently killed.

Then it would be on to finish Marek.

Roark smirked. He was getting ahead of himself. The arbitrary magicks which governed Hearthworld wouldn’t even allow him to write a portal powerful enough to attempt the trip back to Traisbin until he was able to cast level 9 spells, which was still a ways off. With his new Evolution and the Carved Ebony Wand he’d looted from a hero’s corpse, he had ten level one spell slots, six level twos, five level threes, two level fours, and a single level five spell slot. Most likely he wouldn’t see level 9 until Infernali. To get there would mean endless hours of griefing, hexing, crafting, and spell-slinging.

Of course, if he wasn’t Dungeon Lord, it would have taken him much, much longer to fight his way up to level 36. Now, he gained the effect Dungeon Lord’s Tax—for every hero killed in the Cruel Citadel, he received one percent of the Experience points. Better still, he earned an additional portion of experience from all heroes killed with the cursed weapons he’d made. With the cursed weapons scattered absolutely everywhere in the Cruel Citadel, those points mounted quickly. 

He switched over to the Dungeon Lord’s Grimoire to check on the current griefing rotation.

A group of low to midlevel heroes was being processed in the corridors of the first floor, which Roark had turned into an intricate sorting mechanism to channel heroes on to the appropriate dungeon level. It looked as if Druz—the new First Floor Overseer he’d appointed—and her honor guard had already reduced the party, killing off the two highest-levelled warriors and leaving the corpses in the mazelike halls. Now the overseer and her underlings were filtering the remaining heroes toward a staircase connected to the second floor. There, the heroes would be decimated by a squad of Changelings fighting toward their first Evolution.

Roark used the Dungeon Lord’s Grimoire to switch views, checking to ensure that the Changeling raiding team was safely in position down on the second floor. Perfect. One lanky limbed, pot-bellied Troll was waiting just on the other side of a hidden punji-pit. The rest were secreted away in niches a little farther down the dark corridor, ready to spring out and finish off whatever the poison-coated sticks didn’t. And while they were taking care of that party and marking the corpses for griefing, Druz and the first-floor honor guard would return topside to process the next group of heroes.

Meanwhile, down on the third floor, a squad of newly evolved Thursrs and Reavers were taking apart the remains of a midlevel party trying to fight their way out of a massive acid pit while the bubbling liquid ate away at their flesh and Health in equal measure.

Roark smiled. He was particularly fond of that trap.

An explosion lit up the fourth floor, and a double portion of Experience points filtered in to Roark. One of the Brute Thursrs on griefing duty down there had just killed a fairly high-level War Druid with a cursed head of Roark’s design.

Roark switched views once more, just in time to watch a set of spring-loaded spear traps impale the remaining heroes, skewering them in place while Elite Reavers and Brute Thursrs cut them to pieces. The heroes tried to fight back, of course, but they were beaten. The trap destroyed their last glimmer of hope for a favorable outcome, and the griefing squad mopped them up handily, spilling blood and hewing limbs with pitiful ease. When the last drop of red drained from the final hero’s Health bar, the Trolls began the process of looting and marking the bodies for griefing so the heroes could be killed again if they came back for their dropped belongings.

The sheer, beautiful efficiency of the new griefing mechanism distracted Roark from brooding over Lowen. It worked like the perfectly fitted gears of a clock. Roark had stripped out the first floor and left nothing but a mazelike warren of tunnels and hidden passageways so Druz and her special teams could wear the heroes down and sort them into the appropriate staircase for their levels. Five sets of stairs descend into the Citadel, each letting out onto one of the primary floors, where a myriad of illusions, curses, deadly traps, and murderous Trolls in various states of Evolution waited for them.

Kaz’s kitchen, Zyra’s laboratory, the library, smithy, training rooms, and living quarters Roark had moved down to the fifth floor within easy reach of the Keep. There were a few issues with this setup, of course, the biggest being that it cannibalized the entire first floor. No one could live or fight there because he needed all the available Floor Management Points just to make the tunnels, trap doors, and staircases work.

Which, in turn, forced all the first floor Trolls down to the second floor with Wurgfozz’s lot … an arrangement neither the Changelings nor their larger comrades were fond of. The Trolls of the Cruel Citadel had only been working as a team for little under a month. Many still harbored hard feelings from the backstabbing and infighting which had been the norm before Roark overthrew the former Dungeon Lord.

Once Roark found a way to solve that last spacing hiccup, though, the Citadel would be a truly elegant griefing machine.

Still, in spite of the minor growing pains and occasional petty revenge assassination, Roark was proud of how well the Trolls were adapting to this new way of life. They had come a long way in such a short time, and for the most part, they were working together with startling cohesion. So well, in fact, that the Cruel Citadel had been upgraded from a Tier Seven dungeon—out of only seven—to a Tier Six, attracting a new, more powerful set of heroes. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

Roark focused on the ribbon marked Dungeon Stats, a function he’d found the day after acquiring the throne, and checked the Dungeon Leaderboard.

Hearthworld was a massive place, home to more than a thousand dungeons. The Vault of the Radiant Shield was still in the far distant lead, with several times the kills of its closest rival and an average of less than one mob death per day. Damned near unbeatable numbers. The Cruel Citadel was nowhere near the bottom of the list, due in large part to Roark’s leadership, but it wasn’t even within screaming distance of Lowen’s dungeon. The Citadel was, however, quickly gaining on the dungeon just ahead of them—Blighted Soul Hollow. 

If they continued to rise through the rankings at this rate, it wouldn’t be long before they were upgraded to a Tier Five.

The problem was, even if the Citadel maintained this upward progress, there was still no way they could defeat Lowen’s dungeon. Roark had spent a day studying Deadliest Catch –Exhaustive Field Guide to the Mobs of the Vast Barren Hearthworld, a book he’d turned up in the library. Troll abilities, even at the top Evolution, barely began to touch Heralds’. One on one, they’d be massacred as soundly as those heroes had been.

Seven hells. No matter how he looked at it, Lowen had the upper hand.

Something Griff had said to Roark once before ran through his mind: If I was up against somethin’ too big to defeat alone, I’d get an opponent to team up. At least ’til we killed the bigger threat.

Sound advice, which had worked admirably against Azibek.

Roark’s eyes scanned the Leaderboard again. If he could find a way to make allies out of a few of the other more powerful dungeons, perhaps they could all work together to grind Lowen and his forces down until Roark found for a way to kill the bastard permanently. Not a great plan, but he saw no other way forward.