Monster Mansion 2 by Dante King (most interesting books to read TXT) 📕

“You leave your brother alone,” Sarah warned him. “I’ve had about enough of you two arguing. If he finds anything, don’t you think we’ll be the first to know? Until then, let’s just give him a bit of space, all right?”

Josh was the third member of their little group. He was Todd’s brother, and the two were always squabbling. The two half-trolls shared the apartment’s tiny bedroom, while Sarah made do with the sofa. Normally the brothers’ fights were low-level affairs. Recently, with the monstrous task of sorting through the data leak and the high stakes, Todd and Josh’s tempers had been on a knife edge. They had almost come to blows a couple of hours ago, and Sarah had banished Josh to the bedroom with his laptop and a case of Samuel Adams’ lager.

Todd groaned and stretched, then began to make his way back into the room, grabbing an ashtray for his cigar as he went. “Fuck it,” he grumbled, blowing a thick cloud of smoke as he sank into the sofa and picked up his laptop again.

Sarah sighed and left the window. She was tall and slender, with a greenish tint to her skin and ears that swept up to sharp points. Her hair was long and dark, with a greenish tint to it. Like Todd and Josh, Sarah was half Outworlder, half Earthling. Her mother had been a Drow, and her father had been from Florida. They were both long gone now.

Halfbloods had a hard time, fitting neither into the Earthling community or the Outworlder community. They were fairly rare and tended to form cliques of their own. When, as a teenager, Sarah had gotten into VR Dungeon running as a pastime and an escape from the grim realities of life, she had found many others like her. There were lots of halfbloods making both a hobby and an identity out of running the challenging VR dungeons simulators that could be found in gaming arcades around the city.

Dungeon sims were as close to the real thing as possible. You needed real armor, real weapons, and live ammo to fight in a dungeon sim, and it was not for the faint hearted. You could even be wounded, but no dungeon sim would ever actually kill. The sims were ingeniously designed so that hits and spells in the dungeon sims would respond to armor and spells just the same as in a real dungeon. The lethality—and the quality of the loot—was the only major difference.

Some groups managed to make a living through sponsorship, running dungeons for TV shows, competitions, or Twitch streams. Some even made it to professional level dungeon sim running, taking part in high-profile global competitions in advanced VR simulators that drew massive crowds.

But not Sarah, Todd, and Josh. The brothers worked in a warehouse over on the east side. Sarah worked in a Drow bar for poverty wages. Between the three of them, they could just afford the rent on this apartment every month, their entry fees into the dungeon sim arcades, and their high-speed, magitech internet connection.

They had all managed to beg a few days off from their jobs to work on this data leak.

If they could be the first to find a real Dungeon, life would be changed forever. The loot they could take from one run in a real dungeon would get them out of this shitty apartment at least. If they could make multiple runs, well, it was hard to imagine that kind of wealth.

They knew everything there was to know about the legendary Dungeons of Eosor, of course. In Eosor, before the fall, the Dungeons had been a core part of life. Eosoreans used them to grow their skills and make their fortunes, and the dungeons benefitted in kind, feeding off expended mana and the occasional lost life, and growing in power.

Of the twelve Legendary Dungeons of Eosor, four had been destroyed beyond doubt by the Fateweaver. What had happened to the other eight, no one knew. For years rumors had flown about that at least some of the legendary dungeons had made it through the portal to Earth on gateway day, but no one had heard anything of them since.

As far as anyone knew, the Dungeons—and the legendary race of the Keepers—were lost forever.

Until now.

Now, the PentaTech data leak was claimed to contain information that the government held on the location of the dungeons. Whoever it was who had actually stolen the data in the first place claimed that they wanted to release the truth about dungeons to the world, and that whoever could sift the data would find their location.

It was too much like a golden opportunity to try. Sarah was determined to give it her best shot.

She had just settled down to begin working her way through the garbled data again when the bedroom door burst open under the full weight of the enormous Josh Hammerfist. Josh was even bigger than his brother, and unlike his brother’s shaved head and face, Josh sported a wild mane of black hair and a beard to match. That made him seem even bigger.

His deep voice boomed in the dingy little room as he waved his laptop about exultantly. “I’ve found it!” he yelled. “I’ve found it! And you’re never going to believe this…”

“Slow down!” Sarah commanded him. She pointed authoritatively at the sofa. “Sit down and talk us through it.”

With a supreme effort, Josh got a grip on himself and crashed down onto the sofa beside his brother. Sarah and Todd crowded round to look at his screen. Josh pointed a stubby finger at the display triumphantly.

“Whaddya call that?” he gushed.

At first, Sarah couldn’t tell exactly what she was looking at, but then she realized. There was the sprawling central structure, looking like an old-fashioned mansion from the ‘30s, set among extensive, overgrown grounds. A high wall ran round