The Cabin Is Always Hungry (A Dungeon Core Horror Slasher)

HELLS GRACE

Part 1

One great perk about being a dungeon core was that I didn’t need sleep.

At least not in the traditional sense or what humans usually do.

I still needed to rest, which was different from being unconscious for several hours. I was still aware of my surroundings. I could still smell the fresh breeze wafting from the mountains and into the forest. Hear the insects crawling through the vegetation and felt the animals wandering out and about within my domain. The funny thing about animals was that they never reacted to my presence all that much.

I could tell they knew I was there, floating around and inspecting my area, except when I’m in what I call the hungry mode. They tended to steer clear of me, especially with what happened with Leo and the others last night. They returned with greater numbers once morning came, and the dust had settled. I reckoned they felt more protected when they were in my presence. I couldn’t extract the essence from them (only humans or sapient beings), so they weren’t threatened by me at all.

When I’m resting, it’s like sitting on the beach under a comfortable breeze and staring at the horizon and the ocean’s expanse for four hours. Even though I looked like a rock, I am still an intelligent sapient being, and every creature in the universe acquired its way of resting, be it to relax or take a mental break.

I had been active for more than twenty-four hours straight, which took a toll on me. After purchasing a “cleaning fee” for my dungeon and watching all the broken pieces put themselves back together by magic, a four-hour break would suffice to replenish my powers and wait for the dungeon’s cooldown effects to die.

My monsters were technically considered creatures (who needed rest), and I had to manage their downtime, too. That was easier said than done.

From what I learned from the system (always helpful and yet cryptic at the same time), monsters needed three things in my dungeon to make them happy:

1. Shelter.

2. Meet their standard needs (i.e., food, water, security).

3. Mental stimulation.

It’s like managing a bizarre and macabre zoo, really. Each exhibit is deadlier than the last. What’s more, not all monsters were the same. For instance, the demon didn’t require food, drink, or sleep to survive. But the body it possessed needed those things, and that’s when I found Demon Maxine rummaging through the empty cabinets, the pantry, and the refrigerator for food. I had to use my crystals to purchase basic “Earthly” foods, which surprisingly cost me only ten crystals.

[Are you sure you want to purchase food for the dungeon?] The system asked me one time.

“Why not?” I asked back.

But the system did not reply to my query. I probably thought I was insane to put such wasteful items in my dungeon. After all, I’m a gem that fed on essence instead of organic materials. It already considered all the furniture and other aesthetics I put into the cabin as a drain to my resources, expecting me to buy multiple deadly contraptions, monsters, and hard-to-solve puzzles.

Instead, I bought another couch, a beautifully-carved bed frame with woodland motifs, and a bunch of groceries.

Demon Maxine made some mac n’ cheese out of a box for breakfast and returned to her den, the ritual room in the cellar (where my dead body currently resided). She probably found it comforting to be surrounded by all that demonic shit and the infernal sigils she drew earlier. Feels like home, perhaps? I didn’t know if demons or any of these archetype monsters ever get homesick, but I was too afraid to ask. It seemed too personal of a question.

I also revamped the ritual chamber by adding a thirty-foot-long narrow corridor between it and the cellar, which had an incline leading into the room. I also made the chamber more prominent, adding another three hundred-square-foot to the original plan. I’ve also included a recessed area in the central chamber where the ritual circle was, requiring any delver to reach my body to climb down these cobbled gothic steps with gargoyles on the railings from the mezzanine (where the entrance was).

Plus, watching the ground part, reform, and alter with just one thought was something to behold. I could basically rearrange the earth! If one room wasn’t to my liking, I could “bulldoze” it and make it look like it was never there. It alleviated my fear of causing a section of the forest to collapse into the space I had left.

What’s funny was that excavating land (by extending a hallway) was much more expensive than buying furniture.

For the final product, the ritual chamber looked like one of those cheesy secret society assemblages in the movies. The ones you’d find beneath an old cathedral with rustic, worn-down pillars, creepy paintings plastered on the walls of their ancestral members, and lots of candles around a slab of rock where you’d sacrifice a virgin (in this case, my body was currently laying on it). Whenever I came here, I expected black-robed figures from the alcoves, chanting an ancient language I didn’t know.

It was the first proper and more traditional dungeon I’ve ever created, as it was entirely built underground.

It also served as a decoy room. If the delvers or the cultists happened to know that a magical gem imbued the area with magic and the monsters currently hellbent on killing them, they might suspect I am hiding inside that ritual chamber.

Well, the joke’s on them.

I also dug three tunnels connected to a large main corridor, which would ultimately lead back to the cellar.

The sizeable main corridor, which I labeled on the system as Vein A, was a straightforward route connecting the cellar to an exit door at the bottom of the cliff near Trail C, camouflaged to look like just part of the cliff’s facade. Taking thirty more steps to the left, a delver would end up on the lake’s shore next to the boathouse.

The first tunnel off from the main corridor, let’s call it Branch A, was another way out of the cellar. It was a half-mile-long tunnel where a delver had to climb a wooden ladder and find a trap door, opening/exiting near Trail B.

…And closer to Old Growth’s den.

Am I being too mean, letting a delver raise their hopes that they’ve escaped the cabin’s clutches? And then only to end up in the belly of a beast where the likelihood of survival was low? I was building it as a guaranteed deathtrap for Hodge and his goons.

Old Growth’s abode turned into a boggy section of the woods (and fire-resistant) because Demon Maxine translated that Oldie had a strong affinity to that particular environment. I’ve also reconstructed the trees around there, making them extra creepy with their jagged and twisty soot-stained branches, dead wood, fake animal bones stuck in the mud, and a permanent trail of mist always lingering two inches off the ground. Unfortunately, the mist was only there for aesthetics and didn’t help lower a delver’s Resolve, but it aided with increasing Dread.

As I said earlier, the monsters required care, and I noticed a drastic improvement in Old Growth’s morale and behavior over the past few hours since I overhauled his den and gave him something to do to pass the time. Since Oldie was a Plant archetype, it consumed nutrients by being near water, siphoning nutrients from the soil, and would perch on the upper canopy to bask under the sun. I would often find the creature up there for several hours, returning to the ground with the energy of a hundred men.

Branch B was different because it was built to be hidden from the delvers.

I built a separate second cabin a mile away into the woods from the main cabin, hidden by foliage and thickets while still being closer to Trail A and the Dungeon Core Tree. It didn’t look as aesthetically pleasing as the main cabin, like an ordinary log cabin in the woods that a huntsman might have built long ago. It only had two rooms: the small bedroom big enough to shove a twin bed and the living space/bathroom/kitchen area. A trap door from the latter led down to another cellar connected to Branch B.

This was Goliath’s home.

Branch B also had a dozen alcoves and exit ports where ladders led to the surface, allowing Goliath to teleport anywhere in my domain without running through the woods. Found a delver scurrying along one section of the area? All the Goliath had to do was get into Branch B and make a shortcut to the delver. It helped that his fox mask allowed him to locate the delver quickly.

Since Goliath was human, he required food, water, and sleep as a normal human would. After the killings (and once his cabin was built), Goliath immediately went to sleep until one PM when he brought out the fishing poles I gifted him (Demon Maxine, acting as my go-to translator, learned that Goliath loved fishing). He walked toward the boathouse and started fishing on the docks for an hour. He quickly caught four rainbow trouts, which he fillets and deboned in under five minutes with precision, got back to his cabin, and started grilling them with salt, lemon, and black pepper. He paired it by opening a can of corn and instant mashed potatoes from the main cabin’s pantry.

He sat on the table and ate his meal silently, removing his fox mask and letting it rest beside the plate.

I floated closer, curious about what this human—who teleported when I summoned him—looked like.

And he looked…real. Like he had a past. Like he had somewhere to go back to. Goliath was a man in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, scars on his face, with a close-cropped beard, short black hair, green eyes, and tanned skin as if he had spent his time under the sun (a desert, perhaps?). He removed the trench coat, let it hang on the chair he sat on, and pulled the tie loosely around his neck. I noticed the tattoos peeking half an inch just above the collar.

Who are you?

After eating his late lunch, Goliath went to the bathroom to wash himself from the grime and dirt over the past day and wash off the blood of those he killed. He removed the tie, suit, and dress shirt, letting it hang on hooks by the cubby. Surprisingly, Goliath looked quite beefy with a few tattoos (that I never gave him) plastered on his body.

And then there were the scars. Healed bullet holes. Stab wounds. Burn marks. Goliath looked like he went through hell.

I recognized one particular tattoo on his right shoulder was a bone frog, which typically honored a fallen soldier—a fallen SEAL.

“Did you serve in the military?” I blurted out.

Goliath paused, washing his face over the sink, and looked at me. He made a curt nod before he applied soap and continued washing.

“So…you had a life before this? Before I summoned you?”

Goliath gave me a soapy thumbs up.

I froze. “Fuck! I didn’t kidnap you, did I? Do you have a family waiting for you out there? They must be worried sick!”

Goliath waved his hand—No.

“How come you can’t talk? Or maybe you can’t talk before?”

Goliath grabbed a towel from the cubby and patted his face dry. He regarded me once again and sighed. He gestured, writing on a pen…or signing something.

“A contract?”

Goliath nodded.

“And you accepted it.”

Goliath nodded again.

“Oh.”

Thinning his lips, Goliath wrote something on the fogged-up bathroom mirror. Don’t worry. No family, it said on the surface.

“Why did you accept my summoning you?”

For the first time, I saw Goliath smile. He walked out of the bathroom and picked up a pen and paper.

He wrote, “Long time ago.”

“You accepted the contract a long time ago?”

He nodded.

“And you’ve been waiting since then.”

He nodded again. He started writing. “No dungeon summoned me. No dungeons on Earth? Maybe all gone.”

“Is that possible? I can’t be the only one.” I immediately thought about my rankings. There were a lot of zeros for just one measly dungeon existing on this planet, let alone within ten light-years. How big is the universe, exactly?

“You are the first I met. Demon might know more.” Goliath gave me a slight, innocent shrug.

“You didn’t answer my question earlier.”

Goliath smiled again and only wrote three words:

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Purpose.

Power.

Blood.

I left the Goliath to shower in privacy and returned to the main cabin, teleporting to the cellar and following along Vein A, where I took a hard left into Branch C. It was nearing three PM, and I couldn’t wait to get my plans rolling.

Unlike the others, Branch C was a continuous corridor that extended down and exited into the natural caverns I found half a mile underneath my domain—an unexplored cave system.

The cave system comprised about twelve chambers connected by naturally-formed passageways that were sometimes narrow or wider depending on which section I floated into. Plus, all of it was within my area of influence. Only three of these chambers were large enough to fit at least six houses worth of space. Seven of these chambers were closer to the lake’s bottom, which caused the water to seep and trickle down to form an underwater river and flood these chambers from ancient lava tubes. Of the seven, about four were wholly submerged underwater.

Branch C exited out into Alpha Chamber, one of three large caverns in the system, half-submerged by water (the other ones were Beta and Gamma Chambers). It formed a large beach right where the tunnel exited; the other half of the cave was a black pit of dark water where an underwater passageway connected it to the next chamber.

The demon’s lit lantern was the only light source in the cavern, her laugh echoing across the space. It was joined by another feminine giggle, followed by a splash from the water when I approached. The demon noticed my presence and let out a wide grin.

“Ah! My liege! You’re here just in time! Siren has told me many ideas about what to do with these caves. She discovered there are plenty more passageways connecting to more caverns all the way to the mountains!”