TDH Vol. 1 pt. 35

I found myself alone in the dungeon, probably boring the audience since I wasn’t really doing anything other than just standing around waiting.

But it was part of Elanah’s plan. I had to trust in it.

And I trusted her, so I trusted it.

She told me that if nothing happened within thirty minutes then we’d move on. Any longer than that and we would start to seriously bore the audience and suffer for it. But just waiting thirty minutes for the plan, assuming the plan worked, would be worth it.

So, I waited. I had no idea how much time actually passed since I had no way of telling what time it was, but I figured Elanah was keeping track somehow.

Then, when I heard a voice come from the direction of the stairs, I looked back and saw none other than the man from before. The one was responsible for us getting rushed out of the dungeon master’s room.

“Well, if it ain’t the hound. What happened to the girl? Get lost? Or maybe she abandoned you,” he said.

I didn’t like him. I seriously didn’t like him. But, him showing up proved Elanah right and meant that our plan would work. I just had to do my part and trust her judgement.

“Looks like all you got from DM back there was some armor. Pretty disappointing, eh?”

I mean, I think that some armor is nice to have. Though I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t actually do much against a beast wanting to seriously attack me with anything more than a light scratch. Cheese’s fangs would probably tear right through this as if it’s nothing.

“Look at this.” The man proceeded to unsheathe the short blade hanging from his waist, revealing something that looked pretty damn impressive. Seriously impressive, even. It was a curved blade with what looked like glowing, brown runes etched it. “An enchanted weapon. One with earth magic. I thought that earth wouldn’t be a good element to go with a sharp weapon… but let me tell you, this thing does some work. Think I might even prefer this sort of enchantment on a sword instead of a hammer or mace now.”

Him having an enchanted weapon… wasn’t part of our plan. It means that our plan will have an even better result if it works, but it also means our plan is even less likely to work now. Elanah better know what she’s doing. That goes for me, too.

“I might have a serious chance of getting through here with this. Hey, hear me out here. Me and you. Since you’re on your own now, want to work together? That girl can join up with us if we find her. But if you’re alone, I’m guessing she abandoned you.”

How stupid are you? Do you seriously think she would just abandon me after how obsessive she acts around everybody? I’d bet on my own parents abandoning me before she does. Actually, now that I think about it… no. That’s not something I want to think about. No matter how bad they might feel about me being in here… they’ve got the house all to themselves now… and they couldn’t keep themselves off of each other even when I was around… nope. Not thinking about that. I don’t want to acknowledge that my parents would abandon me if it means having more time to use every single piece of furniture in the house as—why am I still thinking about it?! Stop! My brain is the worst! Seriously the worst! Wait, I know. Just imagine doing all of that with Elanah instead. Yeah, that’s nice. Bending her over every piece of furniture in the house no matter who else is around and—… oh. I’m… I’m just like my parents, aren’t I?

It was no time to be thinking about that, so I was about to shake the idea out of my head when I realized it would probably look like I was shaking my head to reject the man in front of me. I had to use a heavy, mental sigh to wash the thoughts away instead before nodding to the man.

“Great. You mind taking the lead? This sword might be strong, but it tired me out. Need to give my arms a break,” he said.

Man, I’m a clueless guy from a small country town and even I can see right through you. You’re seriously bad at this.

I nodded again.

“Then let’s get going,” he said. “Oh, by the way. Name’s Marcus. Though, I guess it don’t really matter when you can’t exactly speak or anything.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that, so I just nodded and turned my back to him to head down the tunnel. There were two paths to take, left or right. We went left.

I paid close attention to the sound of his footsteps behind me. There was enough of a distance between us that he wouldn’t be able to attack me, which he was absolutely going to try doing, without closing the distance first. Between training in the forest with my dad, observing and analyzing my surroundings and the beasts in the dungeon, and having a smaller body that seemed to have way better hearing than when I was a Chosen, it would be easy to hear if he picked up his pace to try and close the distance between us.

“I’ve gotta say, everybody’s jealous of you. Even the women,” Marcus said as we walked. I was going a bit slower than usual since I was focusing more on the sound of his footsteps than paying attention to my surroundings. “Being locked up in here and having a girl obsessed with you and all that. And now you’re sponsored? Lucky beast. The others might not show it whenever your girl is around, but you should see how they look at you when she’s got her back turned to them. Like they’re all just waiting for a chance to tear you apart.”

Is he trying to make me think he doesn’t want to do the same by telling me about others wanting to do it or something?

“Personally, that ain’t me. I just want out of here. Don’t stab me in the back and I won’t stab you in the back. That’s how I roll.”

That’s the exact opposite of what Elanah told me about you.

I already knew everything about him from Elanah. Well, I didn’t know his name because Elanah apparently didn’t care about the names of most people she knew. Especially if they were men.

I also realized there was a difference between Fane and Elanah when it came to the sort of advice they gave me. Fane was all about how to keep the crowd on my side in the dungeon while Elanah focused on giving me survival advice and now information on the others.

Between the two of them, I was set.

“I’m surprised we haven’t found any beasts yet. Guess your girl cleared them out and they haven’t come back yet,” Marcus said before groaning. He sounded annoyed.

Hoping I get distracted by a fight to make killing me easier?

“Lucky for us, I guess.”

Yeah, how luck—

It was almost too quiet for me to hear, but I heard the sound of his blade rubbing against its sheath as he drew it.

Even so, I kept walking forward without turning my head to look back at him.

Next came exactly what I figured would. He picked up his pace. There was less time between every step he took, and I could hear him getting closer behind me.

“Don’t let her know I’m asking this, but what’s she like under her clothes?” Marcus asked. “Your girl, I mean. Let it be a secret between men. I’m curious about what we’re all missing out on.”

Seriously?

“Always preferred a bit of hair, myself. Those girls who shave it all off—what, they think I want some kid’s body? Nah, give me some hair. That’s the sign of a woman. So how about her? She got any?”

Do… do you seriously think I’m going to answer that?

“Just a nod of your head will do. Come on.”

I’m not telling you anything about how she looks!

“Tch. Come on. It’ll help me out imagining things at night, you know? Plus I’m sure the audience wants to know. Bet you all those horny bastards watching would keep voting you to stay as long as you give them some of the details.”

I hate that he’s probably right about that, but: one, I’m not telling any of you anything; and two, I know you’re trying to distract me from realizing that you’re getting closer and closer.

“Hope you don’t mind that I’ve been using her as material, by the way. Most of us probably are. Those women in the top—they’re all bitches. Sure, we fantasize about breaking them, but there’s just something better about a girl who’s the quiet type of bitch like your girl. Something more satisfying about making a girl who’s normally so quiet scream out in pleasure, you know? Shouldn’t be too hard either. We heard how you made her sound, and I’m sure we’ve got more to work with than you. Too bad she’s into beasts instead of real men. It’s no fun if she doesn’t want us herself. Want to make her scream with pleasure, not with tears, yeah?”

I’m seriously about to kill you.

If we weren’t in the dungeon, I wouldn’t have wanted to kill him. I just would have wanted to punch him in the face. But, because we were in the dungeon, that meant I could “kill” him and he’d be fine again later. Brought back to life to go through the dungeon again. There was no guilt to feel there. And if the audience voted him out after that, then it wasn’t my problem.

Wait, the audience… shit. Here I am letting some other guy talk shit to me and talk about how he wants to fuck Elanah. Isn’t that going to make me look pathetic in front of everybody? It’s not like I’m fine with it, I’m just—I’m just doing what Elanah told me to do. I’m being patient. But… even if I’m following the plan, I don’t—

The swinging of his blade displaced more air than normal—enough air for me to hear and make me turn my head.

I jumped out of the way just barely in time.

He ended up distracting me after all. If it wasn’t for my enhanced hearing, he probably would have gotten me.

More importantly, despite having what looked like just a normal, curved sword with some runes in it… the impact it made shattered the ground underneath it and sent rocks flying in every direction.

What kind of force is that?!

Marcus didn’t look strong enough to cause that sort of damage on his own, so the blade’s enchantment had to be responsible for that. Not to mention that the blade itself looked perfectly fine still. Had it been a normal blade, that sort of impact probably would have shattered it.

“Elanah!” I barked as loudly as I could.

“You might have good reflexes, but you think a little bark is going to scare me off?” Marcus asked as he prepared himself for the next swing.

I’m not trying to scare you off, you dumb bastard!

The good news was that, even if his sword was powerful enough to deal some serious damage, it was cumbersome to use. He needed to use both of his hands despite it being a short sword just to lift it up and swing it again.

“You might have dodged the first time, but try dodging this!” Marcus shouted as he swung the blade at me. “Awake—!”

A spike of void magic pierced his right shoulder and, while halfway through it, collapsed into itself to bring everything around with it. His right arm dropped to the ground without anything there to connect it to his body.

Had Marcus not been such an asshole, I might have felt bad for him as he cried and dropped his sword to hold onto where his right shoulder used to be.

But he was an asshole.

She should’ve gone for his balls.

I was worried that the plan might not work out due to the enchanted sword, but I couldn’t have been more wrong to worry. Elanah already took him out of commission.

“You need to be careful, alright?” Elanah told me.

I still wasn’t sure what the plan was at the time yet, but I nodded regardless.

“That guy we saw… he has a reputation for trying to trick newer prisoners to think he’s on their side, and then he stabs them in the back and steals whatever they got. And if somebody doesn’t have anything yet, he’ll work with them until after they do and then betray them. He probably won’t try catching up to us since he saw you with me and knows that I know better than to trust him. But if we wait and let him find you alone while you have your armor… he’ll try killing you for it. But we have to wait until he makes the first move. If people see you make the first move then you’ll lose votes and the others in here will want to kill you for being a traitor, even if everybody knows his rep.”

She whispered quietly enough that the observation orbs following us, since there was one for each of us, wouldn’t hear. She simply pushed them away every single time one tried to zoom in closer to listen to what we were saying. I didn’t even consider doing something like that until I saw her do it.

“I’m going to hide down the right path. Take him down the left and I’ll trail from behind at a distance.”

I nodded again.

“You can’t let him know you’re onto him or else he’ll suspect something and leave. If we do this right… we should be able to get whatever he got. Hopefully it’s good.”

Let him think that he’s betraying me and then let Elanah ambush him and take him out so we can steal his loot. Well, if he’s really the kind of guy to betray people in the dungeon, I won’t feel bad about that. Then again, this is Elanah. She doesn’t exactly think highly of other people, so she might be exaggerating just how bad this guy is. Guess we’ll find out. If he’s not actually that bad… I’ll try calling it off.

It turned out that he was actually that bad after all.

“Damn it!” Marcus shouted. “You planned this, didn’t you?!”

You tried stabbing me—crushing me? You don’t have the right to complain!

“I thought you were just trash before,” Elanah said as she approached us, her eyes practically glowing with violet rage. “You proved that it would be an insult to rotting piles of garbage everywhere to call you trash. You dared to defile me in your thoughts, when the only one allowed to even think about me is my fated. You dared to try and attack my fated even though somebody—something as lowly as you has no right to even look in his direction. And then… you mocked him. Do you actually think that you or anybody else could make me feel as good as my fated does?!” Elanah materialized her usual daggers out of void magic. “My fated is a god who can make me feel better than any man like you ever could. Nobody is as good him.”

I—I’m not that good. I mean… I was still a virgin. And things were kind of awkward at first since I had no experience.

“And you know what? He can evolve unlike you. And his dick got even bigger when he evolved. He was already better than you before, but none of you could ever compete with him now.”

What are you telling them?! My parents might be watching!

“And it won’t be possible for you to even think of competing with him by the time I’m done with you.”

“He-hey, look, I’m sorry, alright?” Marcus said, sounding like he was about to cry. “I won’t fuck with him again! And—and I promise not to think about you again.”

Elanah tilted her head, glaring him straight in the eyes. “Do you think I care? You could drop to your knees and beg me for mercy for the next thousand years and it wouldn’t change anything. You could devote your life to worshipping and serving my fated and it wouldn’t change anything. My only regret is that what I’m going to do to you won’t last once you’re revived… but the scars I leave on your soul will remain.”

Marcus reached down for his sword, but I grabbed onto the handle and pulled it away from him before he could reach it.

This is heavy! Seriously heavy! He probably wasn’t lying when he said his arms were tired!

Before he could even try coming after me, Elanah’s daggers sliced through his calves and dropped him to the ground. She then walked up to him, with two new daggers in hand, and kicked him to flip him over onto his back.

The next dagger landed just underneath his crotch.

“Look… you’ve pissed me off so much that I can’t even aim,” Elanah said. “The next one won’t miss.”

I have a feeling that all male audience members are looking away now.

“I wonder how many holes I can make in your body before you bleed out… I always thought about it whenever I saw your disgusting gazes on me, but this is the first time I’ll get to try it. Let’s experiment.”

“Pl-please don’t—”

She let go of the dagger held up over his crotch.

The screams probably lost her a lot of her male voters. Either that, or it terrified them into submission so that the same wouldn’t happen to them.

“Ehehe… did I do good, Woofen?” Elanah asked me, sitting on her knees while waiting for my response with bright eyes.

It was extremely obvious that she wanted praise. And… she did do… well, good, in a way, so I nodded.

Elanah’s lips curled into a wide smile before reaching down to pick me up, lifting me up in front of her face to cover my head with kisses. “He made me really, really mad, so now I need lots of my fated to feel better!”

I’m pretty sure you’re already feeling better!

“Ah… you smell so good when I rub my face against you like this… the only time you smell even better is when we do it and you leave your mark on me… I want you to mark me a lot more, alright? Because I’m yours, Woofen. My body, my mind, my soul—they all belong to you. You can do whatever you want to me, whenever you want to me, however you want to me. I love you, Woofen. And when I compared you to a god… I wasn’t exaggerating. I will follow you before I follow any god. I will worship you until the end of time itself—no, even that won’t stop me. Ehe… aren’t you happy that you have me, Woofen?”

Our relationship suddenly feels like it just had a mountain’s worth of pressure thrown onto it. I’m not ready to be worshipped like a god! Though… I can’t say that the idea of it isn’t at least a little nice.

“I love you,” Elanah said, kissing me on my nose. “I love you,” she said again, kissing me on the side of my face. “I love you,” she said once again, kissing me between my eyes.

She kept on kissing me and repeating her love for me over, and over, and over again until she lifted my body up and began to lean her head down toward my groin. “I love yo—”

I placed a paw against her forehead to stop her before she could reach it.

Not in the dungeon! At least, not when we’re being watched!

Elanah whined and pouted before pulling her face away from a very dangerous area. “S-sorry… I was getting ahead of myself. It’s just… I can’t resist when I’m with you like this… all it takes is one look at it and I want nothing more than to prove how ready I am to worship every single part of you with every single part of me…”

Damn it, woman, you are unbelievably hot, but this isn’t the time for that! I’m sorry, and it hurts me as much as it hurts you—actually, it probably doesn’t, but we need to focus! Think of how much we can do all of this as much as we want once we’re out of here!

I licked Elanah’s face which made her squeal with aroused excitement. More importantly, it made her loosen her grip which allowed me to jump out from her hands.

I then walked over to the sword, placed a paw on it, and then pointed up at her with my other paw.

Thankfully, Elanah was able to figure out exactly what I was trying to say on the first try without misinterpreting it as anything crazy. But, she shook her head. “No. You take it. I don’t need it. And the more you have, the better you’ll do!”

It’s kind of too heavy for me. And I’m a beast. Swinging around a sword by holding it between my fangs isn’t… actually, it’s not like it’s impossible for me to lift, and we’re going to fight Cheese soon. Something this strong might do some good damage to her fangs. Serious damage. Alright. It probably wouldn’t be too good to use during normal fights, but against a boss? Yeah, it should work fine enough for a boss fight.

I knew that Cheese was going to be even stronger since we were together, and because we both already fought her, but having the sword made me feel a bit more confident. At the very least, I’d be able to use it to block her fangs.

I picked the sword up between my fangs, nodded, and took a single step forward.

And it was the hardest step forward I ever took in my life.

Heavy! Seriously heavy! This is the opposite of going fast like last time!

Then I remembered—somehow—what Fane told me before when I was drunk. He said that being slow could work if it meant tanking for somebody else who was fast and able to deal damage.

That would be Elanah.

This might work. I’ll tank for Elanah. Not to mention that I should get stronger in general by carrying this thing around, and being stronger in general should make me—well, stronger when I’m not carrying it, too. Alright. Let’s try this out.

I lifted my head, sword in mouth, and looked forward… just in time to see three goblos with a couple of rats heading our way.

Oh. There’s the beasts.

Me and Marcus were just lucky to not come across any before. Now, though, me and Elanah had a fight ahead of us before we could reach the boss room.

Two of us against five of them.

It was about to be the biggest fight I took place in yet.

And I was sure the fights would only get even bigger as we made it deeper into the dungeon.